The owner of a family van was surprised to receive a ticket in the mail from police in the southern Italian town of Oria accusing him of driving 1230 km/h (764 MPH). The Lizzanello resident had been driving his Fiat Doblo on the SS7 in the province of Brindisi on November 6 and weeks later received a letter demanding that he pay 165 euros (US $223).

Italian tickets allow a five percent tolerance to account for the possibility of error. At 1230 km/h, the motorist exceeded the 90 km/h (56 MPH) speed limit with an adjusted velocity of 1078 km/h (669 MPH), according to the notice signed by two officers (view ticket). Oria police insist that the camera managed by the private firm Sodi Scientifica SpA is perfectly accurate. Officials blamed the incident “clerical error” in a statement issued Thursday.

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The South Dakota House of Representatives voted 43 to 24 on Tuesday to prohibit the use of red light cameras and speed cameras in the state. A bipartisan group of lawmakers led by state Representative Peggy Gibson (D-Huron) took aim at the controversial automated ticketing machine set up in Sioux Falls, describing the due process denied innocent motorists ticketed by the system.

“My constituent not only did not own the car that was photographed, but she was not even in Sioux Falls at the time,” Gibson said Tuesday. “In other words, she was presumed guilty of a traffic violation she did not commit in a car she did not own, but she had to go to great lengths to prove her innocence.”

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The Eleventh Circuit US Court of Appeals on Tuesday saw no problem with jailing a man for eight hours after he blew .03 on a breathalyzer — far below the legal limit. Santa Rosa County, Florida sheriff’s deputies had arrested Roger A. Festa on the charge of driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) on April 9, 2005. Since he had been entirely sober, Festa sued Deputy Adam Teichner and Deputy Douglas Burgett for unlawful arrest.

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A century ago, the forerunners of the American Automobile Association (AAA) provided a service that warned motorists about upcoming speed traps. AAA Carolinas turned away from this history and used its considerable influence on Monday to support a speed trap declared illegal by South Carolina’s attorney general and several of its lawmakers. Since August, the tiny town of Ridgeland has allowed a private company to operate a speed camera on Interstate 95 in direct defiance of a state law enacted in June specifically to stop the program (view law).

“All branches of government are facing constricting budgets,” a AAA Carolinas statement explained. “Law enforcement agencies will not be able to simply add staff to handle the growing traffic volume and therefore must look to creative solutions to do more with less. This photo-radar enforcement program in the Town of Ridgeland is one such example and should be replicated as opposed to rejected.”

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Anonymous informants may direct police to pull over any motorist regardless of whether the other driver has committed any traffic offenses under a ruling handed down by the Michigan Court of Appeals last week. The state’s second highest court reversed the finding of a circuit court that had insisted on police officers having probable cause before initiating a traffic stop.

The court considered a March 17, 2008 incident in which Michigan State Trooper Christopher Bommarito was on patrol in the city of Southgate. As Bommarito was heading out of a parking lot, a woman behind the wheel of a red pickup truck pointed at a nearby car and mouthed the phrase “almost hit me.” Bommarito immediately activated his siren and entered into hot pursuit. He had no other information aside from the point when he pulled over Shaun David Barbarich who was later arrested for drunk driving.

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The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled on January 24 that officers who received speed camera tickets while driving police cars on duty must pay the $40 fine. Montgomery County Officers Dean Cates, Randy Kucsan, Bill Tran, and Dana Way protested after their department reissued citations in their names in 2008. They were found guilty in district court, but a circuit court judge dismissed the charges on the grounds that the officers were denied their due process rights. The state appealed, hoping the court would rule that police officers are not entitled to due process before liability for a speed camera ticket is transferred.

Under county policy, speed camera tickets are re-issued to the policemen, paramedics and firemen who were behind the wheel of police cars, ambulances and fire trucks if the emergency lights on the vehicles were not visibly activated in the photograph. The officers complained that their sergeant would ask them weeks or months after an alleged offense to explain why they were speeding. (Read More…)

In the face on an onslaught by the insurance and traffic camera lobbyists to convince the public that red light cameras and speed cameras save lives, state lawmakers around the country are fighting back. Representatives in Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Washington and Virginia from both the Democratic and Republican parties have noted the lack of effectiveness of automated ticketing machines in their respective states and have proposed severe restrictions or outright bans on their use. Later today, the Virginia House Militia, Police and Public Safety Committee will discuss legislation that places a moratorium on further red light camera deployment in the commonwealth.

“No locality shall implement or expand a traffic light signal violation monitoring system on or after July 1, 2011,” House Bill 2327 states.

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The North Carolina Appeals on Monday exonerated the owners of the red light camera that killed a twenty-four-year-old. The heavy device had fallen onto the Ford Mustang in which Elizabeth May was a passenger on May 17, 2007. May’s family sued the city of Fayetteville, where the camera was located, and Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), the for-profit company that owns and operates the red light camera program.

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The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety spent all of yesterday touting its report on the effectiveness on red light cameras as if it were the most “comprehensive” study available on the topic. The group emphasized the effects cameras would have had on one hundred of America’s largest cities, but the report itself only looked at accident numbers in fourteen out of the 500 jurisdictions that have active photo ticketing programs. Industry researchers did not even know how many red light cameras were in use in the locations studied.

“Attempts were made to obtain historical information on the number of red light cameras in the study cities, but information on the scope of red light programs could not be obtained for many of the cities,” the IIHS study explained (page 9).

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The automated enforcement industry has suffered significant setbacks in the past several months. In November, voters in America’s fourth largest city, Houston, Texas, used the referendum process to outlaw automated ticketing machines. A number of California cities have been dropping red light camera programs after experiencing mediocre safety results. Now one of the key industry players, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), is fighting back with a report released today claiming that with more red light cameras “a total of 815 deaths could have been avoided.” The IIHS report, however, did not actually consider a single red light camera accident.

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In October, Jefferson County, Missouri signed a contract with American Traffic Solutions (ATS) allowing the Arizona-based company to issue red light camera tickets in return for a cut of the profits. Now just three months later, the county council wants out of the deal. All seven members were unanimous in the desire to change direction, even signing a letter to lawmakers urging them to adopt a statewide ban on automated ticketing.

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Residents in four cities in Washington state may opt for a ballot vote to ban the use of red light cameras and speed cameras. This week activists launched a coordinated effort to place the future of photo enforcement to a vote of the people in Bellingham, Longview, Monroe and Wenatchee. Each local group is following the battle plan established in Mukilteo where 71 percent of voters last year ousted automated enforcement.

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The US Court of Appeal for the Eighth Circuit on Monday overturned the sentence of a man convicted based on questionable testimony about a traffic stop. Despite clear evidence that a police officer contradicted himself regarding the reason he pulled over Ronald Prokupek on February 29, 2008, a magistrate in Nebraska and a federal district court judge still found him guilty. The three-judge appellate panel strongly disagreed, noting the rarity of the situation where it was forced to declare the lower court judges guilty of “clear error” in their decisions.

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The accuracy of the speed cameras deployed by Forest Heights on Indian Head Highway (State Highway 210) has been questioned by local residents were claiming innocent drivers were being ticketed. Citation photos appear to show many cases that speed cameras in Forest Heights cited vehicles for speeds far in excess of the speeds the citation images indicate.

First, Forest Height’s speed cameras are a proprietary design by Optotraffic, a division of Sigma Space Corporation. These cameras are neither radar (like most cameras used in Montgomery County) nor are they exactly like traditional police LIDAR. Technical specifications for Optotraffic’s cameras can be viewed here.

To simplify it, Optotraffic’s cameras work by taking two laser sensors into each lane of traffic. The device “records the time when each sensor detected the object.” The speed is then calculated as “Measured Speed = Distance/Time.” If a vehicle is determined to be exceeding a predefined threshold speed, a short distance/period of time later the device snaps two photos a fraction of a second apart.

So why would someone think the devices are inaccurate? Well, because many people have gotten tickets from Forest Heights for speeds they know they were not traveling at. Some of them performed their own distance/time calculations from the citation images which produced an extremely different speed than what they were cited for.

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Unable to verify the accuracy of certain speed camera readings, the government of Alberta, Canada announced Monday that it would issue full refunds to motorists. Doubt surrounds speeding citations issued from any of the forty-seven red light camera intersections in the city of Edmonton under a program known as “speed on green.” The refunds cover automated tickets mailed between November 2009 and January 14, 2011.

“This is the right action to take,” Minister of Justice and Attorney General Alison Redford said in a statement. “Our first concern is the fair administration of justice, and we cannot proceed with legal action when there is doubt about the accuracy of the city’s speed on green ticket technology.”

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