Round Rock vote to terminate Redflex contract
I’m on the mailing list for Texas Campaign for Liberty, and just learned that the Round Rock City Council is considering “a resolution authorizing the City Manager to execute a letter terminating the contract with Redflex Traffic Systems, Inc.”, on this coming Thursday (tomorrow, that is, October 8, 2015, at 7 PM at 221 East Main Street). This is the letter I’ve written.
Dear Mayor McGraw:
There are better alternatives to red light problems than red light cameras. Wherever they are tried, red light cameras tend to increase corruption, and, eventually, the temptation to reduce safety is too great to resist. Red light cameras tempt the camera company and local officials to reduce yellow times to dangerously low durations so as to increase revenue—currently millions for RedFlex, according to KXAN’s news reports. And the very nature of the revenue-sharing method that red light programs use is a temptation to bribery and other forms of corruption. Wherever they are tried, it seems, eventually somebody falls.
I used to live in San Diego; it is a fine city with fine public officials. But when they brought in red light cameras they lowered yellow times so low in places such as Mission Boulevard that people driving the speed limit would be unable to stop before the light turned red!
RedFlex, the company we currently use, is notorious for both increasing the dangers of intersections by reducing yellow times, and for corrupting local officials. They have been found guilty in Chicago for “one of the biggest bribery scandals in the city’s notorious history”, and according to the Chicago Tribune one of the witnesses said bribery is standard practice for the company across several states. Given that independent investigations, as reported on KVUE, show little if any improvement due to the red light cameras, it would be best to sever ties with this company.
There are several technical solutions that should be tried before risking red light camera corruption:
- Increase the yellow-light time. Studies everywhere show that increasing the yellow-light time according to engineering recommendations will have long-lasting safety benefits. This one change often reduces the revenue from red light cameras so low that they’re not worth having!
- Add an all-red clearance interval. When AAA Michigan worked with Detroit to reduce intersection crashes, leaving an all-red clearance interval for a second was a major factor in reducing intersection crashes and intersection injuries by 50%.
- Improve the intersections themselves. We have some pretty dangerous intersections here in Round Rock, with highway feeders crossing local roads next to trains, such as at I–35 and McNeil, or the conglomeration of highway feeders, local roads, poorly-accessible parking lots at I–35 and Old Settlers Blvd. Punishing people for red light running doesn’t change that the intersections themselves are very driver-unfriendly and pedestrian-unfriendly. Bringing traffic engineers in to advise on high-injury intersections will bring far better safety improvements than red light cameras, which only punish drivers rather than making intersections easier to navigate.
Almost invariably, when intersections are properly designed and signals properly installed, red light running drops to such inconsequential levels that the cameras become pointless wastes of money.
Red light cameras are one of those ideas that sound good until you take a closer look at what they actually do and the effects they have on communities. I urge you to terminate our contract with RedFlex Thursday before they affect Round Rock as they have other cities.
In response to Texas 2015: News from Texas in 2015.
- October 14, 2015: Red Light Cameras and rock-throwing children
-
On Thursday night, the Round Rock City Council voted unanimously to give Mayor McGraw the authority to cancel the red light program. It sounds like he’s going to do it. Before the roll call, McGraw said something very, very smart. The purpose of the red light cameras when they started was to reduce deliberate red light runners, not punish people who accidentally missed the light by a fraction of a second because of circumstances that everybody meets once in a while.
But, a lot of people were not paying their red light camera fines. And the Mayor realized that very likely, the people paying their fines are not the people we meant to target. The people we meant to target were the people who are now also not paying their fines.
It is always very easy, when faced with deadly lawbreakers, to focus on the easy catches, the people who aren’t being deadly to begin with. After last week’s shooting, for example, the left wants to punish law-abiding gun owners. Well, that’s no surprise, they always want to punish law-abiding gun owners. They don’t like putting more criminals in jail, or even, sometimes, calling criminals criminals. Those are hard choices. It’s a lot easier to target non-criminals; they are once again literally discussing banning all guns.
However, they recognize that the choice they want us to make is completely unreasonable—take away everyone’s firearms. So they can’t contrast that choice with the reasonable options, such as allowing qualified teachers and administrators—those who pass the stringent concealed carry background check and tests—to carry if they choose. And protecting our children with the same resources we use to protect our politicians, such as the police officers who show up at city council meetings. No, they have to make up something that sounds as unreasonable as disarming all non-criminals for what criminals do. Here’s a typical meme:
A kid on the playground throws a rock at another kid on the playground. The teacher gives rocks to all of the kids since, after all, only a good kid with a rock can stop a bad kid with a rock.
This is typical leftist thinking: if you aren’t in favor of complete surrender, you want total war. This has been a tactic—or intellectual failing—of the extreme left since at least the writing of Advise & Consent, which I reviewed yesterday.
- Alternatives to Red Light Cameras at National Motorists Association
- “There are better ways to decrease red light running than ticket cameras, this article details some of those methods.”
- Despite cameras, more injured at Round Rock intersections: Andy Pierotti and Derek Rasor
- “A KVUE Defenders investigation uncovered more drivers were injured in crashes at intersections in Round Rock with cameras than before the city installed them.”
- Ex-Redflex exec pleads guilty to helping orchestrate $2M bribery scheme: James Meisner and David Kidwell at Chicago Tribune
- “The Tribune first revealed the questionable relationship between Bills and Redflex in fall 2012 after obtaining a 2-year-old internal whistleblower memo written by an ousted Redflex vice president. The reporting prompted Mayor Rahm Emanuel to fire Redflex and overhaul the city’s red light camera program, which has raked in more than $500 million in traffic fines and remains the largest in the nation. The Tribune investigation also sparked a federal probe that led to Thursday’s guilty plea.”
- Round Rock considers removing red light cameras: Phil Prazan
- “For the ones who do pay, who makes the money? According to city records, in the last three and a half years, Round Rock has collected just more than $175,000. The city’s vendor, RedFlex, has made more than $2 million. Compiling police data, the cameras have made no difference in traffic behavior. Chief Banks says if the cameras were gone, they would spend their efforts on public awareness campaigns against distracted driving.”
- Watchdog: Red light bribe scandal could be widespread: David Kidwell at Chicago Tribune
- Rosenberg said that during his tenure Redflex “bestowed gifts and bribes on company officials in dozens of municipalities within, but not limited to the following states: California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Florida, New Jersey, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia.”
More red light cameras
- Turning crime into a profit center
- Asset forfeiture and traffic laws have one dangerous thing in common: they turn danger into a profit center for government.
- The traffic ticket lottery
- States and cities are treating traffic enforcement as a tax lottery for themselves. Why not turn the winnings over to the voters?
- Money more important than safe intersections
- When cities make money when laws are broken, they’ll ensure that those laws are broken more often. With red light cameras, this means shortening yellow times to unsafe levels.
- Red light cameras increase accident rates
- Yet another study showing that red light cameras increase, rather than decrease the danger at intersections.
More Round Rock
- Growth does not pay for itself
- Growth that doesn’t pay for itself is cancerous growth. It isn’t the growth of population that gets more expensive, but the expanding grasp of government.
- Business prospect incentives discourage innovation
- Complicating the law and raising taxes, then lowering them for businesses that know how to lobby local or state governments, is not a recipe for encouraging innovation. It is a recipe for killing it.
- Why don’t taxes go down when population goes up?
- The left says that government can better take advantage of economies of scale. So why don’t they lower taxes when population rises?
- Round Rock extends dangerously low speed limits on Highway 79?
- Are accidents along Highway 79 in Round Rock the result of speed limits that are too high, or are they the result of speed limits too far below the 85th percentile?
- Round Rock, Texas: The Round Rock Public Library
- The Round Rock Public Library’s Book Nook doesn’t have many books, but what it has is quality.
- One more page with the topic Round Rock, and other related pages