The first southern New Jersey municipality to issue a red light camera ticket admitted last week that it issued 12,000 tickets worth $1 million at an intersection where the yellow light time was illegally short. At the intersection of William Dalton Drive and Delsea Drive, motorists were given just 3 seconds of yellow warning before the camera began snapping — as opposed to the 4 seconds mandated by state regulations. Mike Koestler, the former mayor of Harrison Township, caught the error after receiving a ticket.
The camera’s private contractor, American Traffic Solutions, issued citations at the intersection’s westbound approach, which had the shortened yellow, from March 26, 2010 until October 26, 2010 when the state corrected the signal timing. The borough claimed that the yellow was never lengthened after the speed limit was increased from 25 MPH to 35 MPH in 1993. On December 28, the Glassboro Borough Council met in a closed-door session to discuss a threatened lawsuit over the issue and reluctantly decided not to refund the $85 citations, but to allow motorists to take the time to come to court and ask in person for a legal proceeding to return the money.
“The Borough has a genuine dispute with the state Department of Transportation as to why the timing issue occurred and whether the issue has any effect on alleged violations,” Glassboro Prosecutor Timothy Chell said in a statement. “But in the interest of justice, local officials have requested that drivers be afforded the option to have their tickets re-examined.”
While a one-second difference in the duration of the yellow warning at an intersection might seem insignificant, the extra margin of safety is critical. The vast majority of red light “violations” happen when drivers misjudge the end of the yellow light by less than 0.25 seconds — literally the blink of an eye (view Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) chart). In most cases, a yellow shortened by one second can increase the number of tickets issued by 110 percent, according to a TTI report. Confidential documents uncovered in a San Diego court trial prove that the city and its private vendor, now Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), colluded to install red light cameras only at intersections found to have short yellow times (view documents), thereby maximizing profits.
[Courtesy:Thenewspaper.com]
Bastards. They are playing with lives in order to enhance revenue.
Another evidence of corruption in government. And we want to turn our health care over to people like these?
Time to rise up. I am beginning to believe that anarchy is better than what we are getting now…
you want to turn health care over to a red light ticketing company?
“you want to turn health care over to a red light ticketing company?”
No, they would screw it up as badly as the government has.
The governement runs a health care for years and years and my parents never had any issues with it. What’s the name of it …. huhhh Medcaid, Medcare?
Last I heard they were going bankrupt, along with that government retirement program, what’s the name of it … Social Security?
Ignore the fact that Medicare operates more efficiently, has lower costs per procedure, and has a higher satisfaction rate than any private health care insurer. We all know that gubermint is inefficient and bureaucratic! Death to Obamacare!
>I am beginning to believe that anarchy is better than what we are getting now.
Congrats! You’ve reached the logical conclusion of the Tea party mentality! There are a few delightful lawless African nations on which we can base our new nation! Thank you red light cameras somewhere you’ve probably never been for showing us how corrupt the entire system is! Without anecdotes like this we would never know the right and true path forward was complete anarchy.
Back in the sane world, we’re upset by a little corrupt collusion between local government and the red light camera people, but we’re glad there’s a law limiting the shortness of the red lights, and we’re glad there’s a legal redress. I noticed a story the other day about a city passing a referendum banning red light cameras. What a great country we live in where we can peacefully participate to vote down unjust laws!
@ Mark MacInnis: you want to leave health care in the hands of insurance companies who arbitrarily take it away when you’re in the middle of chemotherapy for cancer (recision), who don’t let you buy it because of pre-existing conditions or don’t cover those condition if they do let you buy it, and I could go on and on but I won’t? One friend who wanted to start his own company, which would have created more jobs for other people had to stay in his job because if he had left, pre-existing conditions clauses would have kept his wife from being treated for her breast cancer. This sort of thing prevents probably millions of others from changing jobs or starting companies.
Medicare, courtesy of Uncle Sam! has been doing well by senior citizens–too bad politics prevented us all from having it. And, as a self employed person, I pay 9 Gs annually to my health insurance company.
@ Jellodyne,
That’s a straw man argument as the current Tea Party does not advocate anarchy (defined as you not getting the big govt you want) anymore than the original Tea Party wanted anarchy after getting rid of British rule.
Jellodyne,
Medicare operates more efficiently than any private insurer?? Really? Proof please. Also, please explain how Medicare has lower costs per procedure when they are a payer, not a provider. Medicare is a payer of last resort, meaning (correctly) that they want insurance to pay for as much as possible before they throw in a nickel… just like private insurance. I suppose from that perspective, they are as efficient as insurance companies.
Last I heard, for every $1 Medicare takes in, it spends $3. Efficient? Are you sure?
@jkross22: common sense says your figure, that for every dollar Medicare takes in, it spends $3, is nonsense. For one thing, it would very quickly go broke. But I can tell you this: Canada, with its single payer system, spends half as much per capita on health care as the US. ~$3,000 while in the US it’s ~$6,000.
As a single payer system, Medicare is bound to be cheaper than private insurance. Among other things, American doctors have to spend a lot of time (which equals money) dealing with insurance paperwork, which Canadian doctors don’t have to deal with.
@ David Holtzman:
Canada, with its single payer system, spends half as much per capita on health care as the US. ~$3,000 while in the US it’s ~$6,000.
Does that include the Canadians’ out of pocket expenses for US care when they want to escape waiting times? (Like the ex-premier of Quebec did when he wanted the best specialized surgery?)
As a single payer system, Medicare is bound to be cheaper than private insurance.
Yes, it’s cheaper. You get what you pay for, though. Many physicians, who don’t like its low payouts, won’t see Medicare patients.
Costs ARE lower. CHOICES are fewer.
Among other things, American doctors have to spend a lot of time (which equals money) dealing with insurance paperwork, which Canadian doctors don’t have to deal with.
There’s more paperwork because there’s more choice. American doctors can practice state of the art procedures that are unavailable in Canada. In Canada, paying your physician out of pocket (like the ex-Premier of Quebec did when he went to Florida for care) is a crime.
ihatetrees wrote: “Does that include the Canadians’ out of pocket expenses for US care when they want to escape waiting times?”
That’s an old canard. Out-of-country care accounts for a tiny fraction of one percent of all health care spending by Canadians–most of it for specialized procedures, not to jump queues. [And the specialized procedures we’re accessing wouldn’t be available in most of your 50 states either.]
The bottom line–like it or not–is that we spend a lot less, yet are marginally healthier and live slightly longer. When universal health care was introduced, many were afraid of the cost of their fellow citizens running to the doctor every time they got the sniffles, but in practice what we’ve discovered is that more frequent doctor visits equals more preventative care … which saves even larger sums in the long run.
The only way Medicare operates more efficiently than a private insurer is that they are the government and they set the prices and the doctors have to accept it or go without. And when your “customers” are just about every retired person in the whole country that gives you an unfair advatage over the “evil” private insurers. and yet Medicare is still heading for insolvency.
.
ZekeToronto, that may be an “old canard” but I’ve seen it for myself here in Florida, a 1000 miles away. I can only imagine what it must be like in Seattle, Buffalo, Boston, and Detroit.
this it totally bogus, unfair, and dangerous.
HOWEVER, there isn’t enough money in NJ to pay for roads and bridges, so the politicans take money from us by cheating us rather than taxing us fairly for gas and road usage. Why? becuase we’d fire them if they raised taxes. So instead we’ll fire them for cheating us with a bogus red light camera.
At the end of the day, we, as the voters and taxpayers must take some responsibility for the proliferation of these ticket camera abominations by sole virtue of the fact that we’ve left the pol’s little other choice.
let me take the first step here:
Dear Elected Offical:
Please consider taxing me another $0.05/gallon for gas before you screw me with a red light camera, thus making my insurance (unfairly) go up, as well. Please spend this additional revenue on safety and structural improvements.
Thanks
Sundowner, it’s highly doubtful they are putting those funds into roadway development. The Newark NJ ordinance says nothing about where the funding shall go. For most small municipalities, it will just go in the general fund. For many, I’d bet that revenues go to the local law enforcement.
And even though money is fungible, if you give a particular agency a new revenue stream, they will not give up the old one. They will find a new way to spend the new one. So gaining revenue from ticket cameras is likely having minimal to zero effect on the budget of actual highway capital improvements and operations.
I would love to see true accounting of everything the government does, and true transparency in what each revenue stream brings in, where it goes, and what the costs are of each activity. That’s information the government will never give us, because it would shift power out of their hands.
“I would love to see true accounting of everything the government does, and true transparency in what each revenue stream brings in, where it goes, and what the costs are of each activity.”
Highway, assuming you live in the United States, that information is available. A lot of it is on the web, and if you need more detail you can file a Freedom of Information Act request. No, it’s not always easy to find, but you’re talking about a crapload of data generated by hundreds of agencies.
Sundowner, I was surprised how low gasoline taxes are in New Jersey. They could raise them 5 cents/gallon and still have relatively low fuel taxes.
Map of State gasoline taxes
http://www.api.org/statistics/fueltaxes/upload/GASOLINE_TAX_MAP_OCTOBER2010.pdf
The people who decide to make intersections less safe to raise revenue should be criminally responsible for not meeting minimum yellow times. Also, there is something wrong when government depends of people violating the law to collect revenue. Would whole towns go bankrupt if people carefully obeyed the law to avoid tickets?
Ah, memories of southern New Jersey and Delsea Drive (Rt. 47). I grew up a few miles south of there and have driven up and down that road many times. If I close my eyes I can almost hear Al Alberts singing “On The Way To Cape May”.
Oh, they ‘reluctantly’ decided *not* to void all the tickets and give people their money back? I can’t believe that was ‘reluctant’ at all. It’s much easier to put the onus on people to come to court to beg for the money that was illegally stolen from them. They’re counting on most of those 12,000 folks saying “It’ll cost me more than 85 bucks to miss work, park near the courthouse, waste my time in the courtroom, so it’s not worth it.” Plus, who knows what kind of bogus ‘processing fee’ for challenging they’ll put on them.
Just vile, everyone involved.
@ Mark MacInnis: you want to leave health care in the hands of insurance companies who take it away when you’re in the middle of chemotherapy for cancer, who don’t let you buy it because of pre-existing conditions, and I could go on and on but I won’t? Medicare has been doing well by senior citizens–too bad politics prevented us all from having it. And, as a self employed person, I pay 9 Gs annually to my health insurance company.
My position exactly. Thank you, David. I worked for a very popular health insurer, i wouldnt let them administer my dog’s license.
I’m surprised an enterprising/crooked attorney hasn’t already contacted those ticketed and sued ACS and NJ for public endangerment. And where is Ray LaHood? Where is his dept. to be found on this matter, where hundreds of lives are at risk simply for the profit of a company and padding of a budget? I guess since it’s not Toyota, he’s not interested in holding another session of Kabuki theater.
Asshat.
I’m just thinking about the front-end of the issue … when the speed was raised from 25 to 35 mph … and the yellow time was not concurrently increased (as required by law) … by the corrupt action of the politicians to not return the fruit from the tainted (photo radar) tree, I have the feeling that the speed increase was done deliberately and specifically to trap drivers coming into the intersection with 10 more mph, yet less time to clear the intersection …
If the device also recorded the speed of the vehicles ticketed, at a minimum, I would refund the fines for any vehicle shown to be between 25 and 35 mph … fines above and below this range could be retained by the state…
Very interesting idea.
David, What interesting idea are you referring to?
I wonder if municipalities in NJ are exempt from class actions lawsuits.
Although, I find it hard to believe that longer yellows correlate strongly toward reducing accidents. I think yellow times vary state by state quite a bit.
Ah yes, “The Garden State”. I was born in Hudson County, NJ. The last time I applied for a passport, I was told I could not use my original Hudson County issued birth certificate because all certificates issued by Hudson County from 1904-2004 were suspect as fraudulent. 100 years worth of scams, that’s got to be some kind of record. I was told to get a certified copy from Trenton. They don’t call it “Dirty Jersey” for nothing.
Who are they who are calling Dirty Jersey. Self hating expats like yourself or self important, insecure NY’rs?
By the way, where do you call home now?
Do you have the long form?
Hang the entire city board and mayor from the very red light that is set fast.
While its easy to compare our health system to Canada’s because they are our neighbor, the truth is Canada’s system is pretty mediocre by single payer standards. Part of this may be an issue of Canada’s sheer size and population density, I don’t know.
By the standards of the best health systems in the world though (western Europe, Scandinavia), our system is a very cruel joke. Just ask the people on AZ’s state Medicaid system recently kicked off the transplant list because of Jan Brewer’s budget cuts. In any other western democracy, if you need a transplant, and there’s a donor organ available, you get it. In the US? Better have a bake sale.