A Delaware superior court judge took a stand last month against the warrantless police use of GPS devices to record the movements of drivers. Judge Jan R. Jurden issued her ruling in the case of Michael D. Holden who was arrested on drug charges in February 2010 as a result of information obtained from a tracking device.
The city council in Washington, Missouri no longer believes that red light cameras have a positive impact on safety. Members voted 6 to 2 on Monday to allow the automated ticketing contract with American Traffic Solutions (ATS) to expire, and Mayor Sandy Lucy agreed to draft a letter to the for-profit company making it clear that the council has no interest in ever bringing the devices back.
Port Lavaca, Texas residents want the opportunity to vote on the future of red light cameras in the Gulf Coast city of 12,000. Activists who formed the group Port Lavaca Citizens Against Red Light Cameras circulated a petition that would force an up or down vote regarding camera use onto the ballot. Under the city’s charter amendment rules, the group needed to secure 289 signatures. It collected 519, plus another one thousand signatures of support from motorists in the surrounding community.
TTAC will slow down for a hot minute as your humble editor makes his way to the County courthouse to pay a speeding ticket. And no, to those who might be wondering, this particular citation was not the result of some M-Coupe lunacy. I simply got busted doing 65 MPH while passing someone on a mountain highway that had briefly dropped to 45 MPH (while going through an alleged “town”)… and I was driving a Subaru Impreza 2.5. In short, there was nothing cool, fun, exciting or worthwhile about this particular transgression against the laws of speed. So I ask you, cheer me up with your wild stories of crazy speeding ticket-related encounters… remind this poor confused kid that speeding can be indeed be more than simply mundane.
Speed camera operators in the UK are looking to hike costs for “educational courses” and redeploy cameras to more lucrative locations to address a growing budget deficit. The options for the Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership were discussed in an August 11 strategy meeting, the minutes for which were obtained from a freedom of information request. The partnership consists of local police agencies, local council members, the courts and the staff who run the speed cameras themselves.
A federal class action lawsuit was filed Monday against the notorious speed camera trap in Ridgeland, South Carolina. Three law firms teamed up to make the case against the town’s outspoken mayor, Gary Hodges, members of “the local police department and iTraffic, the private company that operates the cameras on Interstate 95. The case was filed on behalf of residents of Greer, South Carolina; and Dunnellon and Kissimmee, Florida.
The French parliament has taken a step toward significantly reducing the non-monetary penalties that accompany most speeding tickets. The National Assembly voted Thursday to diminish the amount of time that minor traffic violations affect a driver’s record, and consequently his insurance rates. The changes came in the form of a compromise amendment to a wide-ranging homeland security bill known by the acronym LOPSSI II.
Class action attorneys have set their sights on a South Carolina town that set up a freeway speed camera in defiance of state law. Since August, the town of Ridgeland has allowed the private company iTraffic to operate a speed camera system to mail tickets worth $133 to $300 each to the owners of vehicles photographed as they pass through a tiny stretch of Interstate 95. The fully automated system is housed in a recreational vehicle that is usually concealed behind a bridge. When state legislators heard of the town’s plan, they unanimously enacted a law to prohibit the use of speed cameras (view law).
A federal judge last week overturned the result of a traffic stop in Baltimore, Maryland after the reason for the stop was found to be bogus. On January 26 at around 1:30pm, Baltimore City Police Officers Jimmy Shetterly, Frank Schneider, and Manuel Moro ordered a white Ford Crown Victoria with tinted windows to pull over while driving on Pennsylvania Avenue near Mosher Street. As part of the Central District Operations Unit, the officers saw their mission as “proactive crime fighting” and instead of waiting for calls, their mission was to go and find a crime. The officer sitting in the back seat of the patrol car found one in the form of a claimed vehicle defect.
The red light camera program in Cleveland, Ohio faces serious legal trouble as the state’s second-highest court ruled Thursday that a class action lawsuit could proceed. In its decision, a three-judge panel of the Ohio Court of Appeals for the Eighth Appellate District overturned a county court ruling that had blocked a class action challenge to the city’s issuance of photo tickets to the drivers of leased vehicles. The appellate court insisted that the case had merit as did a federal appeals court in a separate case decision over Cleveland’s automated ticketing machines handed down last month (view ruling).
A federal judge sided yesterday with a traffic camera company by blocking anti-red light camera referendum sponsors in Houston, Texas from participating in an ongoing legal challenge. US District Court Judge Lynn N. Hughes will decide whether the November 2 vote of Houstonians against traffic cameras should be nullified. Hughes will now make his decision based solely on the arguments presented by supporters of photo enforcement — the city of Houston and American Traffic Solutions (ATS).
Opposing factions in the Missouri General Assembly have emerged ready either to authorize or prohibit the further use of automated ticketing machines in the state. One one side, state Representative Tim Meadows (D-Imperial) has been wined and dined by lobbyists for the photo ticketing industry and, in return, has filed legislation specially crafted to expand the use of speed cameras while appearing to be a “limitation” on their use.
Red light cameras are nowhere near as popular as they once were with Golden State municipalities. Loma Linda and Whittier became the most recent examples of California cities unplugging their automated ticketing machines after noting that the devices both failed to reduce accidents and generate the promised amounts of revenue.
The top cop in the city of Washington, Missouri admitted last week that there is no evidence that red light cameras have made a change for the better. Police Chief Kenneth W. Hahn compiled accident information from 36 months prior to camera installation for comparison with 33 months of after data. The results were not favorable.
“It is impossible to determine if the cameras have had an obvious impact on safety since prevention is an intangible outcome; in other words we don’t know if we prevented an accident or not because it didn’t happen,” Hahn wrote. “We can only look at the raw data and if the impact is significant, then it is an obvious result. Provided the next three months of anticipated accidents are included for an accurate comparison, it is my opinion the three year red light camera program has had little, if any, impact on the overall safety of the two intersections.”
A civil rights think tank on Friday urged Albemarle County, Virginia to cancel its red light program. In a letter to county supervisors, the Rutherford Institute made the case that the contract the county entered into with Australian vendor Redflex Traffic Systems violates the law and will likely not achieve the stated goal of reducing accidents.
“The Redflex contract incorporates a so-called ‘cost-neutrality’ provision whereby the company’s compensation, up to the amount of the contractual monthly fee, hinges on the number of violations or monetary penalties imposed,” the group’s president, John W. Whitehead, wrote. “Regardless of how the fee arrangement is worded or structured, it is likely to be found in violation of Virginia law where the vendor has a financial incentive to ensure that a high number of citations are issued.”
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