Parked car was caught speeding.

American Traffic Solutions should be fined & the money given to the person who was falsely accused!

Fred

Where a parked car was caught speeding, a car who did not run a red light got a summons, but it doesn't negate the fact that cams make sense. DC is using it to bust commercial vehicles using routes where they are prohibited, etc. etc.

I remember a story in the Sun where a dog stole a car, and I very much enjoyed reading it as I was checking out at the grocery store.

The important thing to realize here is that they admitted they were wrong only because they had to. If you get photographed while someone is speeding past you, but the photo happens to be taken when the speeding car is not quite as far down the road as yours at that instant, they may blame you. Particularly if the speeder passes you on the right rather than on the left.

Someone makes a mistake - admits it was unwarranted - claims it is a one off and due to human error (not due to the camera video), and you want to punish them!

And your reason is?

It seems to me that a person trained to look at videos should be able to detect a parked car from a moving car. ATS, a contractor for the city, "harmed" a motorist and therefore needs to be punished. I believe it was negligence or fraud on ATS's part. A thousand dollar fine seems fair to me.

a Five thousand dollar fine each to the municipality and to the red light camera company, after a enough incidents the company should lose it contract. this happens way too frequently and a lot of times the people that bring it to the attention of the municipality are ignored.

A warning in your opinion is "harm", I take it.

But only this time.

[emphasis added]

I have to agree that if it happens at all, it is a problem, but - you make it sound as if this is a common occurance.

Would you like to venture a guess as to how many time in the USA something like this happens in a year?

Then you might also guess how many time in a year someone runs a red light or speeds and does not get cited.

Maybe we can discuss the statement "a lot of times the people that bring it to the attention of the municipality are ignored" later.

When the Baltimore Sun newspaper looked into it last year the numbers were significant. Enough to embarrass the city into terminating their camera vender. It had reached the point where some judges were throwing out the majority of cases they saw.

How about not guessing, and actually using cold hard facts? This should all be part of the ever growing camera company arsenal, knowing how many times they give tickets incorrectly. Not waiting until the sucker, I mean customer, I mean victim, figures out they should not have been given a ticket or a warning.

As far as people breaking the law and not being cited, is that how we're supposed to look this? Everyone must be punished! *shakes fist*

Only in Crook County.

@zeaflal, since you live there, perhaps you can find the article that said that judges were throwing out the "majority of cases". You probably read that somewhere but all I could find was a citation that the error rate was 5% and that, I thought, was the reason that vendors were changed. I found an article quoting the Mayor as saying that the error rate should be zero - with which we would all agree.

I react whenever someone starts quoting article they read at some time that said "..." and then make a statement that seems to be at odds with reality. If "majority of cases" were true, then I would have thought that thenewspaper.com would have picked that up and reported it.

Perhaps you could find that "majority of cases" one.

I think that it would be a great idea if legislation enabling Automated Traffic Enforcement required that statistics on error rates, dismissed tickets, tickets refunded after evidence presented, etc. be kept and made publicly available.

If the numbers were above acceptable rates then municipalities would have to explain them to their citizens. Municipalities would likely change vendors and that would keep the vendors on their toes.

More than that, it would remove most of the exaggerations that are made by camera opponents. Then, camera opponents would be reduced to claiming that the data kept was being faked.

Of course, it would be important who was generating those statistics. Impartial would be best meaning not the vendor nor, perhaps, the agency directly running the program thru the vendor. Not sure, but how one does it makes a big difference in the data being trustworthy.

Fred

Not just exaggerations on the side of camera opponents, but on the side of camera companies as well. It's a little hard to swallow that this was "a one-off mistake" when the camera company isn't the one that found this error. It's not like they went back and checked all of the citations issued. The city asked the vendors to redouble their training.

I have no way to determine right now if the mistake was "one-off" and whether when "Deputy Transportation Commissioner} Kubly said he was not aware of any other case in which the wrong vehicle was mistakenly chosen for a warning or ticket, calling what happened to Kasten an "isolated occurrence" was telling the truth. Since this happened only a few days ago, we will need to watch the Tribune to see what is reported in the next few weeks.

What I am hoping everyone's postings are as accurate as possible and not exaggerated to advance personal beliefs.

Yet another reason not to trust these idiots. Talk about incompetence.

It was over a year ago and the Sun is not a friendly site for non electronic subscribers. I think it occurred after multiple articles were published about camera errors. I am guessing (don't know) that if you looked at your photos and thought you had a case, you were more inclined to take it to court. But since the judges already knew about the high error rate they were more inclined to agree. It also depended on which judge heard your case. I think that only one or two actually were ruling against the city for a majority of the cases.

But think about the cost. If the fine is $40 and the camera company gets somewhere around half, it takes a very high conviction rate to cover the court costs for each person who gets off. When the acquittal rate goes up, the city looses money rapidly.

As it should be:

where Big Brother exists...worse that we live in a society where Big Brother exists and the sheep readily accept it...the very worst is living in a society with Big Brother where the sheep accept it and then excuse the "mistakes"...that's my reason...other peoples' mileage may vary.

Accepting unfair treatment by government guarantees it will be worse in the long run whether it be traffic tickets, taxes, salaries for government officials ...

That is NO secret. Honest governments treat their citizens fairly in ALL respects. Once you go down the slippery slope, everything is up for grabs.

Fred

That's the government at work for you.

Vendors and municipalities have every interest in maximizing their profits.

That is ridiculous.

Your logic seems to imply that - since vendors and municipalities want to maximize their profits - that the vendors and municipalities would conclude that they could take improper actions with impunity.

I find that logic hard to follow: there will always be some citizen who will bring an impropriety to the attention of a newspaper which will publish the story for its gleeful acceptance by camera opponents. The vendor, in particular, then runs the risk of their contract not being renewed which would negatively impact profits.

If I were a municipality and wanted to increase revenues through cameras, I would add more cameras. I can think of several intersections here in my town where almost every time I am at that intersection stopped waiting for my green, I see someone blow through the perpendicular roadway clearly on red.

There were doznes of stories of that same thign occuring in Baltmore.

Then there was the big story of a deceased Police Officer was signing off on the tickets. He had been dead for a year and his signature wa on tickets being sent out.

And many yellow lights had been timed to be 1/10 of a second.

At this time, the Speed Cameras are all shut down in Baltimore due to all of the scandals, with no date set for a re-start. But they are negotiating with other companies so it looks like they don't want to give up the revenue derived from the problem plagued campaign.

Jgermann wrote:

Because the wrongdoers are never charged with a crime

Not sure what you mean by "same thing"

I remember the "deceased Police Officer" "signing off" on tickets incident. However, just like many of the people who picked up that article by the Baltimore station, I never found any follow up that indicated that the explanation by the police department that internal documents indicated that a real, living, police officer had reviewed and signed off on the violations was untrue. The deceased officer's name was on the computer printed violation and that is pretty bad. Makes you wonder, I admit.

However, if the violation actually occurred, the persons sent tickets were liable.

I must have missed the 1/10 of a second issue. Can you expand on what you understood the situation to be?

It's surprising that Chicago would take American Traffic Solutions considering their track record in Baltimore. Especially after dropping Redflex. Oh well, I guess revenue over accuracy.

If municipalities and/or vendors are caught in improprieties, they still suffer - so the logic is still false. You may want them to be charged with a crime, but they still suffer.

With what crime would you want them charged?

Before we get into a discussion of revenue (which it is always about) versus accuracy, should we not have a look at the contract provisions?

Fraud would be a good place to start.
Then, being that the tickets were sent out through the U.S. mail, Federal charges of Mail Fraud would be a nice touch. I could make a good case for racketeering, too.

Sounds good, but I doubt that it fits the definition of fraud or racketering. It was an error - whether you like it or not. There was no intent.

Intent would be written into the contract. ATS runs all the revenue-light cameras in Florida, and there have been several articles about the timing of the yellow lights being shortened to accentuate the profits... er, the safet (no thats not it)... The lights were shortened to protect the lifespan of the bulb! Yeah, that has to be it!

Taking off the sarcasm for a moment, the reality is that once the revenue falls off, the contracts have been reported to require the city to guarantee a certain level of return to the company. The fastest way to do this is cut the light timing.

Where the contracts (or the city) are prevented from specifying this rate of return (there is one city in Florida that changed their code after the cameras were operational) or the traffic engineers actually set the light timing... The cameras tend to be removed.

That city in Florida (I'm remembering it is Sunrise, Fl - but don't quote me on that) had their light timing monitored and adjusted by the traffic engineers. Once this was done at the request of the city IIRC... ATS wasn't happy and their contract was changed to a 'flat fee' and subsequently ended.

The city claims to be 'reviewing options' about reinstating the cameras, but it has been over a year now and nothing has changed.

ATS wants guaranteed minimums of revenue, with no upper limit. Once that is changed to a flat rate, they don't want to play anymore... Or are they on flat rate somewhere else?

I would assume that the police officer must certify under oath that a violation occurred...If a violation didn't occur, is that perjury? It makes you wonder carefully the "multiple layers of review" actually look at the videos/pictures showing alleged violations. As for Baltimore; if you were a police officer certifying tickets, wouldn't you take the time to verify that it was your name was on the ticket, not someone else’s name?
Mark

I wouldn't even know how to go about that.

Interesting article here. Thanks, I will be making the city commissioners of our red light camera city aware of this latest problem with them.

Bummer

Do the certifying officers in your state swear under oath when they afix their signature (more than likely initials) to a certification of violation? Does everyone who signs a check in your state swear under oath that they have funds in their account to cover the check when it is signed and presented as legal payment?

Please read the article again to get the facts of signing. If you want to research it further, follow to the newscast where they show a copy of the printed output received by the violator. It was claimed that a computer put an image of the officer's signature on the document violators received.

This happened in 2011. I looked again but could not find any follow-up articles which I assume would exist if it was other that the circumstances claimed by the police department. Have you looked and found any?

From the Tribune link

Sounds like racketeering to me.

Did they give the dog a Breathalyzer or a ticket for not wearing a seat belt?

Ron
----

"I was asked to come to Chicago because Chicago is one of our fifty-two states."
Raquel Welch

I dunno, but I haven't seen that newspaper for years at the checkout, a real shame...

Well, a new week begins, I wonder how many times this week I'll be in a RLC pic at the stop line....probably 0-3, I would say it's once every other week at least....

I don't remember that. I do remember when they learned how many officers were "reviewing" the tickets and how many tickets were issued, it worked out that each review took an average of 6 seconds. Even less if the officer took a bathroom break or if he actually rejected some.

I agree with your sentiment.

Good read.

Holy Wow.....doesn't seem to shock me now a days.

You really have to love the fact that these ridiculous speed camera stories come out of places like Baltimore and Chicago.

It's not a surprise from either city.

In the case of Baltimore they are rehashing camera installations and a contractor which was terminated.