Speed Camera Gives Parked Truck 45 Tickets

The jurisciction should be fined a very large amount of money for what comes to harassment of citizens. They also should throw out all other speeding tickets for a month from other vehicles.

Lastly, should they fail to repair the system correctly, they should lose their contract for operating the site.

Fred

That's a good lesson to learn. Never park by speed cameras!!

I disagree. I think that anyone that can, should park next to a speed camera. That way if the unit generates fraudulent tickets, it brings more attention to a flawed system. Enough attention to a flawed system and perhaps they go away.

Have said it any better myself! This just highlights how useless this type of law enforcement is.

Ya, but for the few mistakes these make they make up for it in traffic control. If I drive 70 (the posted speed limit) in Indiana I feel like the slowest car in the Indy 500. In Phoenix last winter we all went about the same. To me if you are not breaking the law then WHY WORRY!

oh I forgot, it's a government take over of your right to go fast and not be late when you should have left earlier...

The speed camera caught a John Deere combine speeding in excess of 100mph. On closer look, the rear fender of a motorcycle is in the picture.

Darn those farmers' kids with their souped-up, hot rod combines!!

Now that there is funny...

The story above is a good reason to worry. It's not an isolated incident. These things are there to take your money and they don't really seem to care too much about mistakes, as long as they get your money. As for traffic control, they just make the roads more dangerous. I'm not advocating that anyone speed, but this is not a very good way of enforcing it and it needs to be banned. More traditional enforcement should be used if there is a problem area.

Dup post deleted

The contractor providing the service should be fined.
This happened in Europe. I believe we have better screening/filtering process in US.

Who cares if the guy was parked? He must have been speeding!
The camera said so...
So much for those that maintain blind faith in camera enforcement.

You have to wonder what sets their cameras off. A parked truck, on a side street, shouldn't be tripping the camera ever, even if it is within the field of detection of the speed camera.

Gotta say the Dutch are screwed in that they have no right to see the evidence against them.

Just yesterday the local news media had a segment on an indiviudal that has to go to court to plead his case in a speeding camera incident. Apparently the photo was taken was of a car with Texas plates but having the same number as his Louisiana plate. Although the cars were totally different he still got the ticket. Obviously, someone made a mistake in the ticketing process.

I guess they do catch some people! The ones in our area have signs letting you know that they are ahead. So folks speed until the signs, then slow down until they are past the cameras, then begin speeding again!

That helps keep court clerks in loop.
If this is no dispute, everybody pays the fine, they will be out of work. lol

My mayor sent out a special newsletter justifying the cameras to his constituents. It was a rebuttal to stories run by The Daily Herald and Chicago Tribune newspapers. I appreciate his giving an explanation. I also appreciate the review process he describes. It SEEMS that like it will prevent errors. As long as it doesn't break down somehow, as it did in the Netherlands for that parked truck.
Here's a link to the pdf of the newsletter.
http://www.elkgrove.org/forms/RedLightCameras.pdf
The mayor makes a pretty good case, but I'm still skeptical.

So, I read the Elk Grove newsletter and came away unimpressed.

First of all their year-to-year comparison indicates that there was a roughly 7% differential between controlled and uncontrolled intersection crashes.

But of course, we cannot know about unreported accidents, whch is what most of these controlled intersection encounters turn into - rear-enders which most often do not result in the police being called out - the overall rate may well have increased. We don;t know. They don;t know or aren't saying.

And, of coursem, from a revenue perspective it looks like Elk Grove approved 10,671 citations of which "Our Police Department estimates that roughly 1 of 5 violators who contest their citation, have it dismissed by an adjudicator."

First of all, they reject about 30% of the proferred violations up front - and it seems that if you contest you have a 1 in 5 chance of having the charge dismissed?

So, just how much money do 9,000 to 10,000 tickets generate in revenue? How much in manpower would it cost to issue those same tickets from patrol cars?

If it isn't about the money, why not donate the funds to MADD or to some charitable organization?

THAT would eliminate the bias complaints.