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…)

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 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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The Tennessee General Assembly, which in past sessions has endorsed the use of speed cameras and red light cameras, is preparing once more to either expand or restrict their use. Bills introduced earlier this month provide the foundation for action that frequently takes a different turn after committee consideration.

Lobbyists for municipalities that use automated ticketing machines have a strong hold over the General Assembly and its committees. In 2008, municipalities joined forces with the camera industry to push through a measure authorizing photo ticketing. To deal with vocal opponents to the idea, then-state Senator Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville) drafted the bill in such a way that its wording appeared to be a ban on cameras. Similarly, attempts at placing limitations on camera use last year were watered down in the committee process to the point where the remaining “limits” merely reflected existing practices.

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The city council in Murrieta, California voted Tuesday to expand red light camera ticketing, and residents are not happy. Officials approved a three-year photo ticketing contract extension with American Traffic Solutions (ATS) and directed the private company to set up 24-hour video surveillance at each intersection. Local activists want to force a referendum onto the ballot to let residents decide whether those devices should be unplugged.

“I’m just so fed up with this,” Diana Serafin told TheNewspaper in an interview. “It’s the $500 fine and big brother watching you. To make an intersection safe, you need longer yellows and a longer all-red period. The city says they want the intersection safe, but cameras cause more rear end accidents. So I’m fighting back.”

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Red light cameras in League City, Texas have failed to reduce accidents according to preliminary data provided by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). Since October 2009, the Australian firm Redflex Traffic Systems has issued citations at three intersections along FM 518. Local activist Byron Schirmbeck analyzed TxDOT reports and found the number of accidents at these locations increased after camera installation. In November, Schirmbeck led the November successful referendum effort twenty miles away in Baytown where voters rejected the use of automated ticketing machines.

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The residents of six cities with a combined population of over 2.7 million voted last year to outlaw the use of automated ticketing machines on their streets. The photo enforcement industry is now working overtime to make up for lost ground by expanding operations into states where neither red light cameras nor speed cameras have been well received. Lobbyists are hopeful that Indiana could be the next state to reconsider.

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The first of some 400 lawsuits pending against Toyota in the wake of the unintended acceleration scandal will go to trial by 2013, reports Bloomberg. U.S. District Judge James V. Selna has asked plaintiff lawyers to select “bellwether” cases from the hundreds of personal-injury, wrongful-death and economic-loss suits pending against Toyota to go to trial by 2013. Selna didn’t specify what types of cases would become bellwethers, cases which crystallize the case’s arguments and provide precedent for damages in other cases, but he did state that evidence discovery for them should be wrapped up in 2012. But before any of the federal trials open, there are still state-level trials to be heard. According to Bloomberg

Selna told the lawyers today that two state-court cases involving sudden-acceleration allegations are scheduled to go to trial in Texas in February and March of next year. Wylie Aitken, who is the attorney maintaining a liaison with state cases, said during a break in the hearing that both of those cases are personal injury claims.

The last time we checked in on the Renault EV Spy Scandal, the French automaker appeared to be backpedaling the seriousness of the affair, claiming all technical secrets were safe. But be that as it may, the WSJ reports that the firm has still filed a criminal “complaint against persons unknown” in the case

for acts constituting organized industrial espionage, corruption, breach of trust, theft and concealment.

The complaint comes after Renault met with its three suspended managers, who tell the press they are accused of “serious wrongdoing” but insist that they are innocent. A lawyer for at least one of the accused Renault employees says she is not even aware of what exactly Renault is accusing her client of. Reuters adds that “a private company in a foreign country” is named in the complaint, which now goes to the State Prosecutor of Paris, who will determine whether or not to investigate the complaint. In an effort to backpedal Renault’s apparent suspicion of a Chinese-based conspiracy, the Prosecutor’s office demurred

We never within the government mentioned such a possibility… It’s Renault’s position. They don’t cite a foreign power, they only cite private persons.

China has already denied any involvement in the affair, and Renault’s Chief Operating Officer alleges that the case involves

an organized international network and that technology leaked involved the architecture and economic model of electric vehicles.

California courts continue to find the evidence provided by photo enforcement citations to be lacking. In both Orange, and San Mateo Counties, appellate division judges found the images presented in court by private vendors to be inadmissible hearsay. Late last month, Kern County joined the growing number of jurisdictions troubled by the quality of traffic camera evidence packages.

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