How cruelly ironic is it that the UK, home of the world’s most vibrant sportscar cottage industry and some of the most notorious “petrolheads” in Europe, is also the world’s leader in automated ticketing and surveillance? Oh, and before you try to answer, understand that Old Blighty’s Orwellian tendencies have just hit a new high/low. The Telegraph [via Jalopnik] reports that Britain’s Home Office is testing new average speed cameras which combine license number-reading technology with a GPS receiver. In contrast to previous generations of speed cameras, the new system, named SpeedSpike, can calculate average speed between any two points in a network, rather than just in a straight line. (Read More…)
The motoring public in Queensland, Australia has foiled a police effort to deploy “covert” speed cameras across the state. Police have expanded their fleet of unmarked vehicles equipped with automated enforcement devices in an effort to boost the number of citations issued. The idea is to ensnare drivers “anywhere, anytime” by blending in with ordinary vehicle traffic in vehicles as diverse as a Toyota sedan, a Volkswagen Golf, a Mitsubishi Lancer, a Subaru WRX, a Hummer H2, and various types of trucks and SUVs.
Three California city councils debated whether to keep or discard red light cameras last week. In Loma Linda officials on Tuesday voted to drop automated enforcement while South San Francisco officials voted to keep it on Wednesday. The debates followed in the wake of a decision by the city of San Carlos last Monday to drop cameras after the duration of the yellow light at the camera-enforced intersection was extended by one second, eliminating the system’s profitability.
US District Court Judge James B. Zagel on Wednesday unsealed documents filed in the case against former Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich (D). The 91-page document lays out in greater detail the evidence in the prosecution’s corruption case against a man charged with using his office to line his own pockets. One of the central money-making schemes alleged is a multi-billion deal to install High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes inside an existing toll road. Blagojevich announced the program in 2008.
Although independent studies have shown a link between the use of photo enforcement equipment and a statistically significant increase in the number of collisions, opponents of photo radar have produced few concrete examples of these incidents. In Arizona, the group CameraFraud.com has begun using freedom of information laws to get its hands on examples of accidents that would not have happened but for the presence of a speed camera van (view studies).
Jefferson Parish, Louisiana has until 4pm today to meet the demands of Redflex Traffic Systems, the company that until January operated red light cameras and speed cameras for the local government. The Australian firm is absolutely furious that parish officials have withheld payment while the program faced lawsuits from citizens and corruption probes from federal investigators. Redflex insisted that the “millions of dollars” owed must be deposited in the Redflex accounts before the close of business today.
In a number of municipalities, decreases in tax receipts seem to be followed by an increase in traffic tickets according to USA Today [Hat Tip: ClutchCarGo]. Surprised? Clearly you don’t read much of our coverage of the proliferation of speed cameras. It’s no surprise that cities turn to speed cameras to shore up budget gaps, as the companies that sell automated ticketing machines regularly highlight the revenue upsides of their products to politicians. But what about “the cushion,” the five to ten mile per hour grace given by gentlemanly police officers to motorists just barely over the speed limit?
A divided three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit yesterday upheld the imposition of automated tickets on individuals who may or may not have committed any crime. The judges ruled on a case that began when Kelly Mendenhall received a ticket in the mail for allegedly speeding in Akron, Ohio in December 2005. Although the ticket against her was dismissed, her husband, Warner, fought the legitimacy of the Akron ordinance all the way to the state supreme court which, unlike the high courts in Minnesota and Missouri, approved of speed camera use (view decision).
The top forty speed traps in the state of Texas raked in a total of $178,367,093 in speeding ticket revenue between 2000 and 2008 despite having a combined population of less than 56,000 residents. Motorist Aren Cambre collected ticket issuance data from the state’s Office of Court Administration to identify which towns generated the most revenue per capita from speeding tickets.
A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that municipalities in most states may use evidence illegally collected by photo enforcement cameras. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit made its decision in the case of Stephen Bell who sued both American Traffic Solutions (ATS), an Arizona-based red light camera operator, and Redflex Traffic Solutions of Australia for violating Texas statutes requiring companies involved in private investigation to obtain a license. The three-judge appellate panel determined that there was no problem with companies offering unlawfully obtained evidence in civil court cases.
A brief study published in this month’s Journal of Trauma examined whether red light cameras installed at a Jefferson Parish, Louisiana intersection caused a reduction in the number of traffic collisions. A team of medical doctors from Tulane University examined accident statistics for ten months before and ten months after the activation of cameras on October 24, 2007. The team found no statistically significant reduction in the number of accidents.
The Georgia House of Representatives as early as tomorrow is expected to take up legislation that would ease the burden on motorists wrongly accused of running a red light. The House Committee on Judiciary Non-civil on Thursday endorsed House Bill 31, which proposes a series of fundamental changes designed to force the city or county government operating the camera system to prove its case. State Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-Cassville) introduced the legislation with five of his colleagues.
“What are you, blind?” It’s got to be one of the motorist’s most-used phrases, but it’s also clearly a rhetorical one. Of all the hardships that come with visual impairment, the inability to drive is surely one of the most frustrating, especially in car-centric cultures like the US. Nearly a decade ago the National Federation for the Blind launched its Blind Driver Challenge, which challenged universities to take up the cause of developing technology that would allow the visually impaired to operate motor vehicles. Today that technology exists. AOL News reports on a Virginia Tech program that is developing a vehicle that can be operated without visual input.
The cities of Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe have sixty days to pull down the red light cameras and speed cameras currently operating on state and federal roads in New Mexico. The New Mexico Department of Transportation (NMDOT) announced yesterday that transportation commission members unanimously decided to outlaw automated ticketing machines on thoroughfares within its jurisdiction.
Based on anonymous driving habit data from customers in 45 states, GPS navigation firm TomTom reckons that Americans tend to drive at about 70 MPH on the freeway, regardless of the posted speed limit. More specifically, most Americans tend to stay within a few miles per hour of the speed limit on interstate freeways. The WSJ [sub] reports that these findings are consistent with efforts to raise freeway speed limits around the country, as Virginia recently became the latest state to raise its freeway speed limit to 70 MPH or above. Naturally, there are still safety advocates still sticking to their “speed kills” talking points, but despite these state-by-state speed limit increases, America’s road fatalities per vehicle mile traveled has been dropping consistently. That Americans rarely drive over 70 MPH, even when limits are as high as 75 MPH, shows that motorists tend to find their natural comfort limit at that speed anyway. And the fact that states with higher freeway speeds tend to be large, sparsely-populated Western states indicates that motorists tend to vary their speed only slightly from the 70 MPH “state of nature” even when faced with longer distances and less traffic. [Hat Tip: ClutchCarGo]
Recent Comments