Maryland cities will create brand new “school zones” in an attempt to issue speed camera tickets on roads that previously had no need of the designation. When the state legislature authorized speed cameras six months ago in response to a $690,506 lobbying campaign from photo ticketing and insurance companies, lawmakers mandated that the cameras could only be used within a half mile of a school zone. Baltimore is among the first to admit that it will bypass that restriction. “You asked if the locations for speed cameras were all pre-existing school zones,” Baltimore engineer Rainna P. Strauss wrote in an email exchange obtained by the StopBigBrotherMD.org website. “No they were not.”
The city’s plan is to take a number of roads that are within the legally required distance to a school but are in areas where children do not regularly walk. Baltimore will install “school zone” signs on these roads for the sole purpose of meeting the legal requirement that the speed cameras be used only in a school zone. The new zones include Charles Street at Lake Avenue, Northern Parkway at Greenspring, Pulaski Highway at Monument Street and Roland Avenue at West Cold Spring.
Baltimore is not alone. In New Carrollton, two of the five proposed speed camera locations were not in actual, existing school zones.
“Speaking as a parent of two small children myself,” the editor of StopBigBrotherMD.org wrote, “if these were legitimate locations for school zones we might ask why public officials put the safety of children at risk by not bothering to do the inexpensive bare minimum step of marking the locations as school zones and alerting drivers to the presence of a school nearby… until there was a revenue motive for doing so.
The following videos document the lack of school zone signs using Google street view: Baltimore locations. View New Carrollton locations.
The Maryland Department of Transportation also announced yesterday that it would delay the start of automated ticketing on Interstates 95 and 695 for at least another two weeks. These cameras are designed to ticket vehicles passing through the state in “work zones” where the speed limit has been lowered to 45 MPH but workers are not necessarily present. The majority of workers in work zones are injured by their own equipment, not by automobiles, according to accident reports.
[courtesy thenewspaper,com]
I choked on my coffee a bit.
Jesus is there no end to the revenue enhancement?
I hate this and I hate camera enforcement of laws. The only recourse is to pay the ticket.
I have maintained for years that speed limits are strictly for monetary gain, as if they really cared about public safety they would have an officer at dagerous areas ALL THE TIME.
They don’t. That’s because the powers that be don’t give a damn about your safety, they want money and “safety” is a great way to convince the public that the cash grab is justified.
When the state legislature authorized speed cameras six months ago in response to a $690,506 lobbying campaign from photo ticketing and insurance companies,
The state legislature authorized speed cameras because the voters voted for speed cameras, or at least said that they didn’t care about them enough. The legislature had voted for speed cameras and red light cameras and to broad their use repeatedly during Ehrlich’s governorship, but he vetoed the bills. O’Malley ran on a pro-speed camera platform. The voters elected O’Malley over Ehrlich, and did not unseat any of the state legislators who led the speed camera charge.
If voters had shown than supporting speed cameras would cost politicians their jobs, then lobbying wouldn’t have been enough to get them passed. But voters had other priorities, and so Maryland has speed cameras and red light cameras.
Maryland, eh? I couldn’t think of a better place for it to happen. They like their Big Gubbermint in Maryland.
We Virginians love Marylanders. We live in the state consistently rated at the top in the nation for efficiency while Marylanders look down at us like we’re all hayseeds. More native Marylanders move here to Virginia every year while others drive over the border daily to work in one of our jobs.
Marylanders cite lingering race issues in the south, pointing the finger at us while Maryland experiences at least one racial hate crime just about every week that hits the TV news and we have none. Home property taxes are 2.5x what they are in Virginia, and you have to pay the government an annual fee for everything including owning a home security system.
We tried speed cameras and abandoned them when the results revealed rear end collisions made that made them more dangerous than useful.
Congrats People’s Republic of Maryland. You’ve found one more way to differentiate yourselves as a state your sons and daughters want to leave and never return.
jmatt :
Maryland, eh? I couldn’t think of a better place for it to happen. They like their Big Gubbermint in Maryland.
I agree. It makes no sense to get mad. This is what the voters like.
What really damages us is when they so badly screw up their own town that they have to leave and move where the rest of us live. I submit California and New York as examples.
I smell civil disobedience in the air. Then again, this is Maryland so maybe not.
The state legislature authorized speed cameras because the voters voted for speed cameras, or at least said that they didn’t care about them enough
Uh, no. The issue of speed cameras (a) doesn’t break neatly by party lines and (b) there was no organized opposition during the election and (c) the local media whores big time for the camera companies. So how would an average voter have a clue whom to select?
The attempt to force a real vote (i.e. a referendum) on cameras in MD came very close to getting the signatures needed without the paid union thugs that usually collect them. The effort only fell short because of the ludicrous 60-day deadline.
For most voters, the issue doesn’t become real until the ticket comes in the mail. And with scameras on I-95, it’s going to start raining tickets big time.
I’m not so sure Virginia is completely innocent of cash grabbing… Are they not known as the most expensive state for speeding tickets?
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/PersonalFinance/story?id=4056885&page=1&page=1
Not that I’d be comfortable with either situation (cash cams or poverty pounding tickets).
That story was written in January 2008 and reflected a surcharge imposed in 2007 that was since refunded and repealed. It’s amazing how a $1000 surcharge can skew a survey, isn’t it? It’s even more amazing how quickly sensible governments can turn on a dime to rid the stench of it, while others just find ways to continue getting around the rules.
Though we’re definitely nowhere close to the cheapest and our speeding laws are a bit more conservative than states to the west and south of us, we’re definitely not in the business of creating fake school zones and playing profitshare with camera peddlers, which is still at the heart of the point.
Now I’m fine with going 65 in a work zone (you know, the one south of Laurel on I-95) but this is ridiculous. It’s just like the MD State Troopers who pull over people for speeding for revenue (instead of tailgaters) and then proceed to do 90 themselves in the fast lane with no lights the whole damn way.
As for Virginia, Appanage, there’s just one thing detracting from it. It seems the appeal of NoVa is so great that everybody and their mother lives there now. As a result, traffic is nuts, especially on 395, 66 and the Dulles Toll Road. Other than that, it’s looking pretty good right now.
If your law-abiding citizenry bristle at the idea of being directly taxed to fund the graft, waste and old boy networks of state and local government, there’s a simple solution:
Criminalize them.
Maryland wouldn’t exist without graft. Baltimore’s every Democratic governor’s training ground for their time in Annapolis. If the state didnt have so many first class law enforcement organizations (trust me, it’s obvious they want nothing to do with this speed control witch hunt since they’ve got higher priorities) it’d be about as lawless as Pakistan.
True that, Obsessed. Easy for me to say since I spend most of my time in Loudoun and they’re overpassing everything in sight right now. And I’ll admit I’ve gotten the best end of the Maryland stick: lenient Mont Co cops letting traffic roll at 75 in a 55 on 270 and early mornings on I-70 chasing all the cars blowing by me at 90 miles an hour. I realized they’re definitely applying a special set of rules after my wife got pulled over for doing 80 in a 55 on 270 just to have the cop yell at her for not paying attention to his “slow down” warning lights and sending us on swiftly on our way without citation.