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Oh Crap...Red light election ruled illegal....


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I'm glad to see it back!

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In Houston, where cameras were switched off in the wake of a vote last November, there are three intersections where accidents have risen more than 400 percent. Citywide, comparing one six-month period without cameras to the same period a year earlier (when the cameras were in use), accidents rose 137 percent. Worse yet, there a 350 percent increase in injuries that involved injury or serious property damage.
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The city should have held a vote before they initially installed them IMHO though. But then again, if that were the case I guess they would have to take a vote on everything the city decided to buy. Maybe have a law where the people of the city get to vote on something that is above a certain amount?

Not sure if anyone goes downtown or not, but they have cameras at every intersection. Not to see traffic necessarily, but to have eyes everywhere in downtown.

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The city should have held a vote before they initially installed them IMHO though. But then again, if that were the case I guess they would have to take a vote on everything the city decided to buy. Maybe have a law where the people of the city get to vote on something that is above a certain amount?

Not sure if anyone goes downtown or not, but they have cameras at every intersection. Not to see traffic necessarily, but to have eyes everywhere in downtown.

If a vote for every single expenditure of say, over $1mil, was put a vote, the city would literally grind to a halt. There are few, purchases made by the city that would NOT go before a vote if that was the situation.

Can you imagine what would happen if they had to approve the yearly budget on office supplies by vote??

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If a vote for every single expenditure of say, over $1mil, was put a vote, the city would literally grind to a halt. There are few, purchases made by the city that would NOT go before a vote if that was the situation.

Can you imagine what would happen if they had to approve the yearly budget on office supplies by vote??

Hmmm, you are probably right. Well what else can we do? I was never for/against the red lights, I just didn't like the way that it all started. Something that invasive should have been put to a vote. Now that the data is out though, I am more in favor of having them again since they decrease accidents. If they get the kinks worked out of the cameras (people getting tickets in error and so fourth).

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I'm happy to see them back. Brings in some money for the city, and dissuades people from running red lights. Win-win.

Really, the only people who could conceivably be against red light cameras are people who regularly run red lights. And frankly, those are the kinds of people I don't want to have a say regarding traffic law enforcement. ;)

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I'm happy to see them back. Brings in some money for the city, and dissuades people from running red lights. Win-win.

Really, the only people who could conceivably be against red light cameras are people who regularly run red lights. And frankly, those are the kinds of people I don't want to have a say regarding traffic law enforcement. ;)

Well, the redlight runners, and the traffic lawyers who defend them. Not to slight Paul Kubosh, but I've never agreed with his argument against the citations. Perhaps an argument can be made that the contract is not in the City's best interest, but camera surveillance to catch criminal activity has long been held to be legal. And, this citation is only a civil penalty, much like a parking ticket is against your vehicle, not you, as the driver.

I haven't read the legal opinion, but my guess is that the court said that this is not a valid way to terminate a contract. Anyone know if that is correct?

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How can it be illegal to have an election over red light camera removal? When College Station voted against red light cameras, it was the same company (American Traffic Solutions) and I believe it was even under contract. Well, the city voted in favor of discarding the cameras, and they were gone in a few months.

And a federal judge blocked Houston because of some technicality in some supposedly illegally-repealed ordinance? What's that all about?

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Not a technicality. The Houston City Charter has specific time limits for elections to repeal an ordinance. This election didn't happen within those limits, so it doesn't count. The election should not have been held at all.

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if red light cameras were about safety, then they should lengthen the yellow light's time by two seconds.

oh... wait... then no one would run them, and the camera company wouldn't make any money.

No, that would just give people an extra two seconds before they run the light.

The way it is currently (supposed to be) set up, all yellow lights are on one second per 10 mph.

Any other solutions you'd like to try?

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if red light cameras were about safety, then they should lengthen the yellow light's time by two seconds.

oh... wait... then no one would run them, and the camera company wouldn't make any money.

Like that's going to work with the aholes that think they are above the law. Or think it doesn't apply to them since they probably don't have a license, insurance, or registration.

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Like that's going to work with the aholes that think they are above the law. Or think it doesn't apply to them since they probably don't have a license, insurance, or registration.

I need to find the research to link to, but it said that lengthening the yellow significantly cut down on red light running, without a corresponding reduction in efficiency of the tested intersections. This has been the argument of the anti-camera people for years, as well as traffic engineers who do this for a living. However, the municipalities have an income motive, and so while they might not admit to themselves that the cameras are there for the money, the reality is that they are there to generate revenue UNLESS it is shown that design modifications and light-timing have been tested and implemented, and running red lights is still at the same levels.

I haven't received a ticket by the red light cameras, and do (or did) find a certain satisfaction when someone ran a light and the camera flash went off. However, many times the intersection design or too-short yellow was the issue.

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Well, yellow lights are supposed to be at least three seconds long, longer for faster roads (up to 6 seconds for 55MPH roads), link. If you think that the city has been short-changing yellow light times for profit (which has been known to happen in other cities), go out on a street corner with a stoplight and time when the yellow lights are.

Also, in terms of red-light runners: I don't know if it's different in Houston, but most of the time, the red light cameras caught people who were trying to turn "right-on-red" and didn't come to a full enough stop to "satisfy" the cameras. To sum it all up, the whole situation was like setting up a bug zapper and finding it only kills harmless insects, not the ones you want to kill.

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Well, yellow lights are supposed to be at least three seconds long, longer for faster roads (up to 6 seconds for 55MPH roads), link. If you think that the city has been short-changing yellow light times for profit (which has been known to happen in other cities), go out on a street corner with a stoplight and time when the yellow lights are.

Also, in terms of red-light runners: I don't know if it's different in Houston, but most of the time, the red light cameras caught people who were trying to turn "right-on-red" and didn't come to a full enough stop to "satisfy" the cameras. To sum it all up, the whole situation was like setting up a bug zapper and finding it only kills harmless insects, not the ones you want to kill.

There was quite a bit of a debate on the right on red thing.

While the picture is snapped, an officer is involved at looking at EACH photo/video of the incident to determine whether or not an offense has taken place.

I'm guilty of quite a few "rolling rights" on a red, but I understand the law that you HAVE to come to a complete stop or else you'd get a ticket. In fact, I was tagged for this when I was younger, so I know officers will write you up for it.

Again, don't want a ticket? Don't get caught. If you get caught, don't whine about it.

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I can understand why this one company in AZ is fighting all this.. their livelihood is on the line. But at the same time, Once your service or product is no longer in demand, don't whine about it and sue everyone in sight. ATS, your time is soon to be over. Move on.

Uncannily timed article. - http://www.msnbc.msn...s/us_news-life/.

One of the places is Los Angeles, where, if the Police Commission gets its way, the red light cameras will have to come down in a few weeks. That puts the nation's second-largest city at the leading edge of an anti-camera movement that appears to have been gaining traction across the country in recent weeks.

Los Angeles hasn't been so lucky.

The city gets only a third of the revenue generated by camera citations, many of which go unpaid anyway because judges refuse to enforce them, the city controller's office reported last year.
that if you add it all up, operating the cameras has cost $1 million to $1.5 million a year more than they've generated in fines, even as "the program has not been able to document conclusively an increase in public safety."

And yet, in addition to the votes in Los Angeles and Houston:
  • The Albuquerque, N.M., City Council voted this month to let residents vote on the future of the city's 20 red light cameras in October. (City lawyers are still weighing whether the vote would have any official effect.)
  • In May, a Missouri circuit judge issued a preliminary ruling saying the measure that authorized St. Louis' 51 cameras was illegally enacted.
  • Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said he would sign a bill the Legislature passed last month to limit — though not ban outright — localities' use of cameras at intersections.
  • The North Carolina Senate voted in April to ban cameras; the measure awaits House action.
  • The Florida House passed a bill last month to ban red light cameras; the measure failed in the Senate.
  • A Superior Court judge last week struck down the law that enacted use of cameras in Spokane, Wash., agreeing that citations generated by the cameras were invalid because they were not personally signed by a police officer.

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A little off topic but why doesn't Houston have right turn arrows (at intersections without medians/u-turns)?

We do - but you can only have them where the cross street has a protected left turn light combined with no u-turn allowed.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Cameras are back on, apparently.

Though I thought they were always on, just not sending tickets.

http://blog.chron.co...ameras-back-on/

I am actually quite glad to see that they're going to be fully functional again. Don't quite understand the judge's decision on the matter (red?), but at least we don't have to pay the Redlight company any penalties and STILL wind up with some revenue.

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This is such crap! I think residents should just start leaving this crooked "money hungry" city! So basically there's no point in voting. They do what they want to do in the end when it all comes down to it!

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This is such crap! I think residents should just start leaving this crooked "money hungry" city! So basically there's no point in voting. They do what they want to do in the end when it all comes down to it!

I'm a total layman, so let me explain as to how *I* see it.

White put in the red lights.

People whined about them.

A petition was put together to put them on a vote.

The vote to remove was approved.

American Traffic Solutions started howling about the violation of a contract and sued.

Judge ruled that the vote was illegal.

AFS gave the city until August to turn on the cameras or else people would wind up paying about $20 million in penalties.

We turn it on, we don't have to go to court, we will receive badly needed income, and can move officers to more needed areas.

BTW: the contract runs out in 2014, so you can protest a renewal at that point.

What EXACTLY is your whine about the red light cameras?

Don't want to pay into it? don't run the light. Seems fairly cut and dry to me.

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