Thursday, May 31, 2012

Johnson City Rear-end Crashes Up, Revenue Down

The headline says it all:  "Rear-end crashes up, revenue down." Unfortunately, you cannot actually read the article unless you are a paid subscriber, but you can see the headline and get a short summary of the article.  I read the article in the paper version that I found and really, the headline does say it all.  There was a statistically insignificant decrease in other accidents, but rear-end crashes were up markedly.  The reason that revenue is down is that Johnson City is no longer able to screw people with a violation for a rolling right on red unless the police actually see the violation and, as a result of the lower amount of fines, Redflex gets a bigger piece of the blood money. 

Johnson City has long had a problem with rear-end crashes.  According to a senior police official, Johnson City has historically had one of the highest accident rates in the state and most of them were rear-enders.  This was stated prior to the installation of the red light scameras, which easily leads to the conclusion that these cameras were never about safety and always about revenue.  These cameras frequently malfunction and are being used for surveillance of citizens in addition to revenue.  I have personally seen these cameras flash when cars weren't even in the intersection. Unbelievable.

Labels: , , , ,

2 Comments:

At 10:44 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Increased crashes at red light camera intersections are quite common. See the data at our website, the particular page with the links is: http://www.motorists.org/red-light-cameras/increase-accidents
Governments usually do not care that safety has been reduced, so long as the revenue stream keeps coming.
The only real solution is a total ban on ticket cameras because they depend upon improper traffic safety engineering and/or unethical traffic management policies. Contact your state and local legislators to tell them you do NOT want ticket cameras used and that you intend to vote against camera supporters. Ask that all ticket cameras be removed and banned.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association, www.motorists.org, Ann Arbor, MI

 
At 10:46 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah. What he said. Ban them.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home