South Carolina: Town Defies State Law Banning Traffic Cameras

The article says that the city was going to have manned camera. The article also says that the state outlawed tickes give with photographic evidence.

The officer would be pulling you over in under a minute and serving you right there. No camera required. No certified letter sent to the vehicle's owner.

Interesting approach!

Before paying one of these "tickets." Reading more recent articles, the town has been hit with a Federal suit. The town is defending by saying the tickets were paid, which proves guilt.

There is a manned car in the area but the officer does not give out the ticket. It comes through the mail. The officer being in the area is an attempt to avoid the conflict with the state law. The speed limit is also dropped on the highway were the cameras are. It is a very classic example of a speed trap to generate revenue. The company providing the equipment is paid out of the ticket revenue. The town's only potential revenue issue is from the lawsuits that have started. Prior to getting sued, this was all added revenue from out of the area for the subject town.

Is the article even legit? The picture is of Mayor Gary March. The article talks about Mayor Gary W. Hodges. Do they have two Mayors?

In the link "went bankrupt" I found this juicy tidbit. It's in regards to Redflex not doing so well for all their shareholders, so they're coming up with creative ways to hand out more tickets to all of us non-law-abiding citizens.

"The company is enticing cities like Phoenix, Arizona with the possibility of ramping up the number of tickets issued with 'secondary violation capturing and processing.' That means the existing automated camera systems will begin issuing extra tickets to drivers who fail to wear a seatbelt, drive without both hands on the wheel or have a burnt-out turn signal. Such tickets are commonly issued in England, which has even issued tickets to drivers accused of making an obscene gesture toward a speed camera.

'Redflex is the most qualified partner for the city to vastly expand upon the current scope of the program to include large-scale rollouts of new enforcement solutions such as the ones highlighted above,' Redflex Holdings Board Member Karen Finley said in a statement on Monday.

With the company's financial health tied so intimately with Arizona speed camera programs, passage of the CameraFraud.com referendum banning photo enforcement in the state would be devastating to Redflex stock which currently trades at A$2.18 (US $1.75) a share on the Australian Securities Exchange."

Gosh, that would be devastating. I mean, think about all the safety, coughclearsthroatcough I mean profit that would be lost! The horror!

I looked on MapSource and located the town of Ridgeland but could someone be kind enough and provide the actual GPS coordinates of this city from start to finish on the I95.

I'll be going through there in three weeks and would like to add a via point on my unit to warn me to slow down when entering the town.

Just hold your pointer on the desired point of the mapsource maps, and the coordinates should be shown in the bottom of the Mapsource window. If you have changed Mapsource preferences from the default settings, you may need to go to Edit > Preferences > Position tab > Select Lat/Long hddd.ddddd.

but I'm trying to find the exact location where the city starts and finishes. Can this be done with MapSource ?

I see the heart of the city is at exit 21 but how far north and south does this city go ?

I just came across this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_95_in_South_Carolina

so in between exit 18 and 28 I'll be on the look-out.

I am not a big fan of Mapsource and seldom use it, but I assume the gray shaded areas mark the political boundaries of the city.

Scroll down to mobile cameras .It says 8 miles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridgeland,_South_Carolina .On Google Earth I got coordinates on going south -80.992082,32.449613 .For Google Earth in search put in Ridgeland South Carolina I-95.

I got one of those tickets, I was going over the limit so I can't complain about the ticket.
The main reason for not fighting the ticket had nothing to do with admitting guilt, it has to do with driving 300 miles to do it.
I read the article with their statement that the picture was checked against the drivier license photo to identify the driver. The picture they sent me would be hard to tell who was driving the car.

1000 cars earn $40,000,000 = $40,000 per car.

I understand where this apparent math came from. The article stated
"The new venture looks to target the estimated 1000 vehicles that pass through the town’s 70 MPH zone at 81 MPH or more — enough to generate $40 million."

I pondered what the sentence was trying to say and concluded that it meant every day there were 1,000 vehicles that were going that fast. 40 million divided be 365 days divided by 1000 cars produces roughly $100 per vehicle. That would be a reasonable ticket amount.

Somewhere in the links I found a quote from someone from Greensboro who got a $133 ticket on his way back from Florida who paid it to avoid the expense of going to fight it. My sense based on the many other articles on speeding cameras is that most people do not pay if they are out of state.

And, of course, the camera probably could not catch every vehicle so the math got away from me.

I finally just chalked up the statement to a thetruthaboutcar.com attempt to plant the "revenue" only seed.

The camera is set up on US 95 and they will not have a problem catching cars going over the speed limit.

You might also find this article interesting:

http://www.thestate.com/2010/12/25/1619356/motorists-suing-r...

If the city of Ridgeland has to spend money on outside counsel to defend itself in this or other lawsuits, the economic incentive for their speed trap is diminished or could go away.

This is also interesting:

http://www.speedtrap.org/city/10530/Ridgeland

I don't know how dependable it is but the location is listed in this forum - mile marker 18 to 22 on I-95.

According to the article, an officer is present but doesn't stop the motorist, the ticket is mailed. A state senator is threatening to get the camera shut down. Here's the article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110327/ap_on_re_us/us_speed_cam...