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Re: Use cameras to catch red light runners, March 23 letter to the editor:
Editor: It amazes me how bad ideas sometimes resurface.
Red Light cameras are a really bad idea. There is no traffic stop. You hold the owner responsible for the crimes of a driver. You have a private company enforcing the law (scamming is more like it), and dubious safety benefits that simple engineering could do better.
I ask the drivers out there, do you want to drive in a society where, instead of being notified and telling your side to an officer on the spot, you get a notice in first-class mail (no process server here) saying pay up or else? Do you want a society where the owner is responsible to prove his innocence? Do you want to be judged not on "beyond reasonable doubt" but on preponderance?
Do you want a society where a private company basically has the right of law enforcement? Do you want a society of zero-tolerance laws where even an inadvertent violation of one-tenth of a second is treated the same as one 10 seconds later? Do you want to drive in a society where proper signal timing takes a back seat to profit?
Do you want a society that expands red light cameras beyond red lights to the entire vehicle code? Do you want to drive in a society where you have a bunch of cameras just waiting for you to make one mistake?
That is what photo enforcement is about - zero-tolerance enforcement, where even honest mistakes are treated the same as intentional actions, where even an emergency is no excuse.
Do Mr. and Mrs. Florida driver want to drive in a world where even sliding through a red light one second late because you hit Florida ice (slick road) or misjudge the signal and tried to stop, grounds for a ticket? That is a bit too intolerant for me.
I don't make a habit of running lights, but even I sometimes can't always stop in time. Sometimes it is because of weather, sometimes because I misjudge the signal and try to stop when I physically can't. The point is, we all make mistakes. No doubt, I imagine everyone out there has had a situation once where they couldn't stop or clear the light in time. An officer will listen; a camera will just mail a ticket.
The camera is nothing more than a zero-tolerance revenue machine that routinely uses short yellows (in some case 3 seconds on a 50-mph road) and short warning times (one-tenth to three-tenths of a second) to increase their profits. Do you really want this kind of "enforcement"? I don't! And many others don't, too.
There is more than one class action lawsuit going on out west about these devices. The irony is that simple engineering changes to the timing can reduce violations by 50- to 90-percent. Yet, these vendors (and cities that use the cameras) would scream like a starving pig if longer yellows were used. For, you see, it costs them too much money.
In Fairfax, Va., for example, a 1.5-second increase of yellow to 5.5 seconds, cut red violations down by 96-percent. In Detroit, Mich., they reengineered four lights with longer yellows and "After 27 months, crashes declined by 47 percent, injuries by 50 percent, and red light violations by 50-percent." In College Station, Texas, last year, there was a 79-percent drop in violations by adding 1.1 seconds on average to their yellows. That study also found 80-percent of the red light violations were deemed unintentional.
And that is the point; a lot of this is inadvertent. Zero tolerance is not a good way to enforce a law. Sometimes people need to deviate from the law for justified reasons. As a pilot, I am allowed by the Federal Aviations Administration to deviate from regulations for emergencies. Yet, the red light cameras would say to all drivers, we don't care if you had a justified reason; pay up or go to court - even if your car was stolen. That is not right.
Re: Using county government vehicles to disguise sheriff's deputies' speed traps:
Editor: I do not understand Hernando County Commissioner Diane Rowden. If I recall, she has requested numerous services and projects from nearly every department in the county, without regard for whether the resources should have been used or not. Now she has a problem with law enforcement using county vehicles to protect county residents - the same residents who have logged numerous complaints about traffic problems in the county.
Commissioner Rowden said that "The county has a difficult time enough with our image." I do not understand that statement, unless she is referring to the people who have received citations affecting her vote count. As for the statement that she does not believe the Sheriff's Office should use county vehicles to catch speeders, what does she think they use on a daily basis?
Has Commissioner Rowden ever considered the upside to using county vehicles? If the drivers know that the Sheriff's Office is using county vehicles, would that not tend to make them more cautious when they see the vehicles on a daily basis, with county workers who are working along the road and performing their job functions? Would that not be a plus for the county to make sure all employees benefit in a safety aspect?
Maybe Commissioner Rowden would like to see the county's roadway death toll increase again, something that the Sheriff's Office has worked hard on decreasing for several years and has been very successful.