Bloggers are having a somewhat random debate over red-light cameras sparked by an offhand comment I made last week.
Dustin at Georgia Liberal argues that Athens-Clarke County could hire six police officers with the $278,000 the cameras cost to operate, although he doesn’t seem to realize that the net cost is actually $53,000, once anticipated revenue from tickets is factored in. JMac at Beyond the Trestle points that out. Then Martin goes on to repeat the myth that red light cameras actually cause more wrecks.
According to police and traffic engineers, red light cameras can lead to more rear-end wrecks as drivers slam on the brakes to avoid a ticket. But they prevent more serious collisions caused by drivers running red lights.
"When we installed the camera on Lexington Road, the first month of operations saw about 335 citations go out, but as we went through the next few months, it leveled to about 150 a month," (Capt. Mike) Shockley said.
That led to a 23 percent decrease in collisions at the heavily traveled southeastern Clarke County intersection.
"That includes the most dangerous kind of collisions, the so-called T-bones where a car is broadsided by a car zipping through a red light," Shockley said.
Although crashes have decreased overall at the Lexington Road camera location, Shockley said, minor "rear-enders" have increased by about 5 percent from people abruptly slamming on brakes to avoid getting caught in the intersection while the light is red.
As of 2008, the county had made $529,000 off the cameras. Recognizing that, as drivers changed their behavior, revenue would drop, officials saved the money into a special account to operate the cameras in years when they don’t pay for themselves.
Which brings me to my main point: Red-light cameras are about safety, not revenue. Keeping them up even though they’re losing money proves it. The Broad-Alps-Hawthorne and Lexington-Cherokee-Gaines School intersections are two of the busiest and most dangerous in Athens. That’s why the cameras are there. Take them down, and eventually, drivers will go back to their old bad habits, and someone will die.
- Blake Aued's blog
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Not sure there are any gods,or unexplainable natural occurrences
"Then Martin goes on to repeat the myth that red light cameras actually cause more wrecks."
If I'm reading your quoted material correctly, that is not a myth. Or does an increase of 5% not fit some definition of "more."
Try this for a correct statement,
The assertion that red light cameras prevent "the most dangerous kind of collisions" is purely anecdotal, as no one has ever done a study of the type and number of injuries at the intersection before and after the installation of the cameras.
Another correct statement,
No one has tried to calculate the cost that a 5% increase in accidents represents in terms of property damage, lost time to the participants, increased insurance rates, and police time devoted to documenting what all concede are minor accidents, all to make another $53,000.00 for the county.
Now if we want to really speculate, and move from facts,
It is highly probable that the additional police services necessary to deal with just a 5% increase in accidents wipes out any positive revenue for the county, and certainly when balanced against the additional costs to the citizens there is little economic gain.
No, you're not reading the
No, you're not reading the quoting material correctly. A 5 percent increase in REAR-END collisions. A 23 percent DECREASE in ALL collisions.
That sucks
You're no fun at all.
Hold yer horses...
"Dustin...argues that Athens-Clarke County could hire six police officers with the $278,000 the cameras cost to operate, although he doesn’t seem to realize that the net cost is actually $53,000, once anticipated revenue from tickets is factored in."
Seems like six cops could write as many tickets as a camera.
"Which brings me to my main point: Red-light cameras are about safety, not revenue."
At the April 13 M&C work session meeting (which you attended) you heard one of the Commissioners (Hamby?) suggest that needed revenue for SPLOST projects could be obtained by adding a red-light camera. You may not think they are for revenue generation, but at least one Commissioner sees them as just that.
It was Kelly Girtz. He
It was Kelly Girtz. He proposed funding laptops in police cars with revenue from red-light cameras, rather than SPLOST. And that idea hasn't gone anywhere.
Ed Robinson also once proposed additional red-light cameras and hiring more traffic cops to generate revenue. Alan Reddish shot him down by saying - you guessed it - that law enforcement isn't about money.
All About Money?
Public Safety should not be about money. I will agree. However, to say that anything political/public service where, taxpayer money is used, is not about money is ridiculous. It is about money. We have funds and we want to figure out what the best way to spend them are. We want to make sure we are being efficient.
I will agree with the sentiment that it SHOULDN'T be about money, but lets face it... when you are dealing with public funds, it will be to some degree about money.
Of course we want government
Of course we want government to be efficient. It's not about money in the sense that police set up DUI roadblocks to catch drunk drivers, not rake in the cash. Money is not their primary motivation for enforcing the law.
Traffic cameras have NEVER been about saving lives
I live in Cleveland, TN and the red light cameras were REMOVED 3 months ago. Why? "Because they were not generating enough revenue." No mention of lives saved or accidents prevented. The bottom line is that the minute they stop generating revenue they are removed wherever they are. It is always about the money. The life saving argument is only there so that they can get away with installing them in the first place. If they were really about saving lives the revenue generated would never enter into the picture. Case closed.
That's Tennessee. This is
That's Tennessee. This is Athens. We're not removing our cameras even though they're not generating revenue anymore. Case closed.
And even if it IS about
And even if it IS about raising revenue, so what? Don't want to pay the govt anything? Don't run red lights! What's simpler than that?
the $53,000 number
Listen. I realize that $53,000 is the net loss. (Total Cost - Tickets). But, do you believe that the cops we hired wouldn't write tickets and generate a revenue? They would actually, likely, generate more money. Tickets for Red Light Cameras are capped at $70. Anyone got a speeding ticket recently? Was it under $70? I don't think so. Cops could give tickets for more than $70.
Second, I think 6 was a high estimate. I will admit I had a glass of wine while writing and neglected to think about payroll costs, retirement, benefits, etc... So, I will admit 6 is high.
My main point is this. I believe that it is more important to hire cops to deal with property crime and violent crime than it is to catch people who are running red lights. That is just a value assessment for me, but I have created a math formula for it to help explain:
Property Crime + Violent Crime > Traffic Crime
That doesn't make any sense
Dustin, your arguments are mutually exclusive. You can't say that additional officers would write enough traffic tickets to generate more revenue than red light cameras, then turn around and say those officers should be investigating break-ins and violent crime, not writing tickets.
Besides, police don't pay for themselves. Athens-Clarke County will bring in $4.5 million from fines and forfeitures this year. The police department's budget is $22 million. So, setting aside the issue of whether they're needed, hiring and training more officers would be a major drain on taxpayers.
Crime is crime
Except that, in my observations of the evidence available, aggressive traffic enforcement has a reducing effect on overall crime, since the number and scope of police-citizen encounters increases during times of heavy enforcement. The officers interact with the citizen, make observations of the vehicle's interior and the citizen's person, and also cross the person against NCIC/GCIC for any outstanding warrants. SCOTUS has given officers a wide latitude for what they can do on traffic stops, and acting legally within this scope consistently nets arrests for "property" or drug-related or illegal weapon crimes. You can see this anecdotally by just paying attention to the blotter in the ABH, and it's not too difficult to search the internet to see the studies and the research methods supporting this.
Police are hired to be police officers; it's not common to find someone who is hired on to be immediately assigned a specific specialization. After a long amount of time spent in training (if they didn't already have the experience coming in), they go to patrol, where they deal with all criminal activity. If they come in with a lot of experience, they probably can be assigned a special unit, but then what the department saves in time and money during training it costs in paying that officer a higher salary from the start. That new officer might free up another in the department for "property" crime, but the question is: are you thinking of this officer as someone who walks around and attempts to prevent property crimes or as someone who investigates criminal acts afterwards and builds a case for eventual conviction?
Either way, you shouldn't think of traffic enforcement as a minor aspect of law enforcement. If you have a hotspot, heavy traffic enforcement in that area, while it might initially upset more of the law-abiding citizens and result in nasty-grams and phone calls, in the immediate and long run reduces crime, property or violent or however you want to categorize these things. It would not at all be unusual for a stop about a missing license plate to turn into an arrest of the driver for carrying a concealed weapon, who will later become identified as a domestic terrorist responsible for one of the largest acts of murder in the United States.
Not Minor
It is not minor, but to me, it is less important. I understand it is important, but I am much less worried about the girl they pulled over in front of Cali-n-Tito's during my lunch than someone who is breaking into a house or violently attacking someone. Just a personal preference. Though, I do see your point.
Again, crime is crime
Not to be too flippant with your viewpoint, I'll point out this is why you're not in law enforcement. The folk understanding of policing wants to say doing the one thing detracts from doing the other; that a girl criminal is somehow less socially harmful than a violent criminal, so we should do less with the first and more with the second.
But the point behind traffic enforcement and red light cameras as a reduction in traffic crashes goes this way: there is more human loss and property damage involved in traffic crashes than in people stealing copper or breaking into homes or punching strangers or loved ones. Now, someone who's suffered from those probably doesn't agree, because of the immediacy of the suffering involved. But, from the standpoint of the entire community, traffic crashes represent the bigger loss of life and resources, hands-down. More lives are lost to traffic fatalities than homicide; more people suffer from the losses incurred in traffic crashes than from robberies or burglaries.
It may very well be a personal preference to focus on something that affects fewer people. Ideas of governance sometimes support the privileging of the few over the many. But, from the standpoint of the safety of the public, traffic enforcement is about the body politic. Obviously: catching the dope-slinging, body-dropping, corner-owning gangsta is sexier than arresting the underage drunk driver. But the aggregate effect of removing drunk drivers from Athens' streets is greater for the community—and there are far more drunk drivers than there are homicidal drug-lords in Athens. And, in the process of doing traffic enforcement, we also happen to reduce through the multiplying effect of police activity and visibility all those other crimes you want to see reduced.
It becomes no longer a question of which to focus upon. It becomes getting the people in the public to stop thinking through the folk lens of policing, and start appreciating the multifaceted nature of the thing.
I agree with your overall
I agree with your overall point, but I did want to point out that a 20-year-old drunk driver is probably no more or less dangerous than a 40-year-old drunk driver. It's just a pet peeve of mine.
For the most part
While statistically, fatalities and crashes are more common to the young, I do agree with you that drunk or influenced driving is dangerous regardless of experience with driving. But, I was more playing off galiberal's diminutive 'girl' versus the blank slate 'someone'.
I figured as such, but it's
I figured as such, but it's usually helpful to clarify. At any rate, thanks to the lot of you for contributing to a thoughtful thread. I actually feel welcome to post this time.
Nice.
Both correct and elegantly crafted. Thanks.