Revenge for the Boston Tea Party?

Fri, 01/30/2009 - 10:45pm

dave817

17 years

I started investigating redlight cameras that are popping up like bunny rabbits in Illinois.

The company that sells and installs these systems charges $90K/year for each intersection and guarantees a certain revenue stream. One of their spokesmen says that even if it doesn't improve safety, so what, it is good for the local governments to get money to spend on roads, etc. That makes it an unauthorized tollroad.

What burns me is that if a driver crosses the white line, but does come to a complete stop before making a right turn on red, it is not considered a dismissal of the fine if the white line is obscured by road salt or snow. Typically the right turn white line is at the same place as drivers going straight, so you have to stop, then move forward where you can see the cross traffic before proceeding. And we are trying to conserve fuel? So watch out for those imaginary lines!

Interesting that the description of their service includes British spellings of "colour" and "defence". I guess the Brits are finally getting paid for their Boston Tea.

Here's a link to the company. Enough to make me angry and willing to make sure all Illinois redlight camera are well documented.
http://www.redspeed-illinois.com/index.php?option=com_conten...

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Zumo 550 & Zumo 665 My alarm clock is sunshine on chrome.

Sat, 01/31/2009 - 9:57am

dagarmin

15 years

.

Yeah.

Thanks for the tip about the stop lines, especially when they're obscured with snow. All you can do to defend yourself if there's snow on the road is be extra conservative about where you stop if you're first in line in your lane so there's no question that you're not over the white line.

Also check out that link for the speed camera products they're marketing there.

It's not hard to see where we're going with this. Instead of paying police to enforce red lights and speeding laws, which is so expensive in terms of the officer's time to make the stop, write the ticket, write a report, and go to court as to discourage enforcement of traffic laws, they're just going to throw up a bunch of cameras under the guise of improving safety but really to raise local revenue. All the small towns that used to have speed traps can now automate them. It's going to get nasty out there for drivers.

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JMoo On

Sat, 01/31/2009 - 10:56am

RSeligJr

15 years

RED Lights

Here in Baton Rouge, They are adding cameras mainly on red lights. The real problem is the red lights. There are way too many. They could save the city a considerable amount by reducing the number of lights in half. After the hurricane last year, we lost electricity through out the city and traffic flow was better than at any time. You could get where you wanted to go in halfthe time. Everyone stopped at the light locations allowing cross direction traffic to flow and it sped up the wait.

Sat, 01/31/2009 - 1:02pm