Red Light Cameras

Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez has been a big proponent of red light cameras. Mayor Marty said the automated system would enable the city's police officers to concentrate more on crime fighting rather than traffic control. He said having these dealt with administratively would avoid clogging the courts. And they wouldn't perturb the Motor Vehicle Division, either, since the city had no power to cause points to be assessed against drivers licenses. Mayor Marty said the hefty fines ($100, $250, and $500 as compared to a fine of about $20 for this offence on a real traffic ticket) would be a deterrent that would cause infractions to drop and accidents to fall. Mayor Marty said this measure was a safety issue.

Opponents objected to the level of the fines, to the lack of due process, to the city usurping state authority, and to the imposition of this new "cash cow" revenue source for the city. They were also concerned that the city would shorten the yellow lights, as had been done in other cities, to increase the city's cash take regardless of its effect on safety. There was also concern that the company that processes the tickets has a positive incentive to maximize the number of tickets to maximize it's take (and, coincidentally, that of the city as well). Mayor Marty, the city traffic engineer, and others assured everyone this was about safety rather than money, and the city certainly would not be so dishonest as to monkey with the yellow light timings.

Albuquerque radio station KKOB AM's afternoon host Jim Villanucci has now taken up the cause of the red light cameras. After hearing primarily from proponents for so long, how we're hearing some reality. Now we hear in instance after instance how administrative abuse has replaced judicial review, with city administrative officers berating truthful appellants as liars and routinely upholding erroneous citations. It has also developed that citations have been regularly issued and upheld against cars that did enter the intersection after the light turned red, but did so legitimately under the control of a right turn green arrow. The city absolutely denied this ever happened — right up until confronted with video proof on Albuquerque television station KOAT. And that's the good part of the news.

Now it develops that accidents are not down at the intersections with the red light cameras, as the city has been insisting. The actual statistics show that accidents are up at all or nearly all — at some, the accident rate has doubled since the red light cameras started working. And people are out timing the length of the yellow lights, finding that many have been reduced from 4 seconds to less than 3. On KKOB radio last week, the city engineer claimed these signals all had their yellow lights set for a 4 second timing, and challenged his interviewer (Jim Villanucci) to time them himself. Even during that interview, people were calling in reporting their measurement of yellow light times under 3 seconds. The next day Albuquerqueans observed city workers changing the yellow light times from under 3 seconds to the 4 seconds the city traffic engineer had falsely said they were set at — and they got pictures and video of the city workers making the changes.

In other words, it looks like everything the city and its mayor have said on this subject has been a bunch of lies.

This shouldn't be a surprise. A number of studies (some of these, for example) have shown red light cameras do not increase safety or reduce accidents. What does reduce accidents is increasing the length of the yellow light. Indeed, one study cited by Villanucci said increasing the length of the yellow light by 1.5 seconds (to 5.5 seconds) reduced red light violations and accidents by more than 90 percent.

But Albuquerque and Mayor Marty don't care about that. They're really just in the program for the revenue.