Pinal County in Arizona just canceled their traffic camera contract with Redflex, the company behind a great majority of these traffic camera programs, including the one in Denver that I wrote about last week.
Moreover, Babeu said, total motor-vehicle accidents increased by 16 percent in the same time period, and fatal collisions in the Queen Creek area doubled from three to six.
My main issue with traffic cameras is that however small an act it is, you still have a right to be given a ticket by an actual sworn police officer standing in front of you (or as is more likely, to the window at your side).
The most disingenuous argument that cities use to justify their camera enforcement programs is public safety. These cameras are often placed in high accident intersections, which because of a simple statistics argument tend to decrease in accident rates over time, but interestingly enough, there is an increasing body of research that demonstrates that traffic cameras actually increase accident rates.
- Tags: traffic systems