Ohio statewide ban on traffic cameras

I haven't been ticketed by any automated enforcement cameras in all these years despite driving through two automated enforcement camera zones going to and coming from work, so I am not a disgruntled victim. But it seems to me that if ONE intersection (Chester at 71st) generates 23,275 tickets in a year, there is something wrong with the intersection, not 23,275 drivers.

An intersection with that many infractions has something wrong with it. The engineers should be studying the driving and traffic patterns that create this unsafe situation and fix it. Of course the ultimate goal is to have an intersection with no infractions, but the city is doing nothing to achieve that. It's too bad that the city fathers opted to sacrifice safety to generate revenue.

The Importance of the Newspaper

You might not always love the Plain Dealer, and you might not always hate the Plain Dealer. Either way, we all need a major newspaper covering our beat. 

You won't get any news from City Hall, even though they have 27(!) departments including 3 dedicated to "Community Relations", "Consumer Affairs" and "TV20". 

City Council won't even publish the schedule and agenda for City Council meetings on their website. They have a box called "Events" that do not include any council events. 

They have 168 hours to fill every week on a dedicated cable TV channel paid for by us subscribers. Why not fill them with video of the council meetings? Stuff that really matters, that affect every neighborhood in the City, that affect how we live our day-to-day lives, extending down to the level of how we take out our trash. I'd like to see the history and thought process that culminated in the decision to allow our sanitation workers to write us $100 tickets. 

Which, BTW, is the same price as a traffic camera ticket. Somehow, I don't think putting a banana peel in the recycle bin falls into the same category as blowing through a red light at 50 MPH. It's astonishing how deeply flawed Cleveland's decision making process has become.

Has anyone in the city administration ever talked about the VADXX plastic-to-oil pressure vessel and its 11 tons per year of particulates they intend to put in Ward 8? The PD did, two months ago. Still no word from the Mayor's office or City Council. http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/04/vadxx_energy_plan_to_extablish.html

The good news is that we're still getting the molecule-based newspaper 4 days a week. The better news is that now I access the electron-based Cleveland.com on any of my 4 computers, my android and my iPad...wherever I have internet...anywhere in the world, even when I'm not home. Even better: now I can search for a topic and get a full history of news articles, reports, blogs, everything ever written in the PD about that topic. (at least in Firefox, Cleveland.com's search function doesn't yet support Chrome. I'll never know if it works on Internet Explorer).

So support your local newspaper: it has a much larger impact on our daily lives than any gun legislation. I keep comparing the NRA argument that adversarial governments will always try to take away our weapons: the SMART adversarial governments take away our newspapers long before they go after our weapons.

Support your local newspaper, whether it's the PD or the Beacon Journal. 

Full disclosure: I delivered the ABJ when I was a teenager, it paid for my first motorcycle; and I'm a card-carrying member of the NRA with a valid CCW..

What to do With Automated Enforcement Traffic Cameras

I'm mad as hell. Cleveland is more than doubling the number of traffic cameras from 29 to 64 units including mobile and trailer-mounted. No one in the city administration has even tried to justify, on an accident prevention or life-saving basis, the installation of an additional 35 cameras. 

No attempt has ever been made in Cleveland to quantify the life-saving benefit of the cameras already installed for the past 8 years. The discussions are always about the money, or about reduced tickets, or about "awareness". But it's never about saving lives. Not once in 8 years have we ever read that the traffic camera at Chester and 71st, which generated 23,275 tickets last year ($2.3 MILLION) saved a single life. Or prevented even one accident. 

Is it even conceivable that enough accidents and injuries are going to be prevented to justify the additional cost to us residents? How incredibly dangerous are those intersections anyway? If they are so bad, why isn't the City engineering department trying to fix the design that makes them so unsafe?

How many t-bone accidents have occurred at those locations over the past 5 years, and how many will be prevented with the addition of the cameras? How many won't be prevented because someone blowing through an intersection at 55 MPH doesn't give a rat's patootie about traffic cameras?

To my politician and law enforcement friends: PLEASE don't make yourself a liar and claim this is about safety. In the 27 years since the first automated enforcement camera was installed in Texas, there are no independent, repeatable, statistically significant studies done that prove that cameras save lives, reduce accidents, reduce the cost of the accidents or even reduce our insurance premiums. Don't you think that in 27 years of operation there would be enough reliable data that would put this question to rest? Hell, with 27,275 data points at Chester and 71 alone, can't we prove SOMETHING? 

Thank goodness our trusted camera vendor is Xerox, a reputable and wealthy firm. Waaait a minute... just five months ago, in December 2012, Xerox admitted that cameras they deployed in Baltimore were producing erroneous (high) speed readings, and that 1 out of every 20 citations issued at some locations were due to errors, including at least one issued to a completely stationary car.

This move to improve the City's finances (remember, that's all they can measure and talk about) is wrong on so many levels. How can creating an adversarial relationship between us citizens and our City managers.be good?

Here's an idea: how about we take that money and dedicate it to fixing our streets?  The list of deplorably bad roads in Cleveland is long and distinguished. Try driving up or down Chester along the curb lane in either direction. This is a major east-west 6-lane divided highway with no driveway access. Hold on to your dental work. Or get off I-90 and head east on Superior along the curb lane through the construction zone. Hang on to your right suspension components.

Write to Bill Patmon and tell him you think traffic cameras are the wrong way to improve safe driving habits.

Open Letter to Zack Milkovich re Traffic Cameras

Representative Zack Milkovich

District 35

77 S. High St, 11th Floor

Columbus, OH 43215

RE: Automated Traffic Enforcement Cameras

Dear Representative Milkovich:

Let me start by saying that I have never been ticketed by any automated enforcement cameras, so this letter is not a rant about an unfair ticket: I don't have an ax to grind. As local governments consider initiating or renewing contracts for privatized traffic law enforcement, state and local officials should protect the public by adopting the following principles:

Primary Principles To Guide The Use Of Automated Enforcement Cameras

1. Put public safety first in decisions regarding enforcement of traffic laws including and especially evaluating privatized law enforcement camera systems against alternative safety options, without regard to potential revenues.
2. Retain complete public control over all transportation policy decisions.
3. Ensure that contract language is free from potential conflicts of interest.
4. Avoid direct or indirect incentives for vendors that are based on the volume of tickets or fines.
5. Retain the option to withdraw from a contract early if dissatisfied with service or its effects.
6. Ensure that the process of contracting with vendors is completely open, with ample opportunity for meaningful public participation.
7. Make information about the operation of privatized traffic law enforcement fully transparent and accessible online.
8. Do not permit information about individual vehicles and drivers gathered by camera vendors to be used for any other purpose than the enforcement of traffic laws.
9. Consider establishing state standards to help cities avoid contracting for automated enforcement systems that are not justified or when alternatives make more sense.

With those principles to guide the common good, I would like to recommend the following changes to your proposed total abolition of the cameras, which I believe would run into home rule issues and result in increased litigation using our taxpayer money on both sides. The State of Ohio can make the following rules that pertain to Automated Traffic Enforcement Cameras throughout Ohio. These recommendations do not establish an absolute ban on the use of cameras as a safety tool, and this is all about safety.

1. Revenue. 50% of all fines ticketed from cameras installed in or adjacent to any State or US highway shall be remitted to the State of Ohio Department of Transportation for use on road and road-related safety improvements and maintenance. After all, the city does not own those roads and funds used to maintain them come from the State of Ohio Department of Transportation. The camera does not need to be located on a State or US highway, but in any direction in that intersection.
   
   
2. Escrow. The remaining fines ticketed shall be placed in escrow accounts for use exclusively on road maintenance, repair, or safety-related improvements to roads in the city.
   
   
3. Locations. Automated Enforcement Cameras shall be placed at intersections only after local governments first investigate traffic engineering solutions for problem intersections or roadways. Cameras shall be placed only at intersections where the occurrence of side impact crashes or pedestrian conflicts are the highest and such locations shall not be influenced by the camera operator.
   
   
4. Local Control. No contract for automated traffic enforcement cameras shall contain deals that constrain future decisions related to protecting safety such as changing timing or traffic patterns for any traffic lights leading to the automated intersection, or for changing the duration of yellow lights, or for diverting traffic toward or away from those intersections.
   
   
5. Payment Incentives That Put Profit Above Traffic Safety: Contracts shall not contain any language that actually or appears to create an incentive for the camera operator to increase the number of tickets issued, including payment as a percentage of ticket revenue.
   
   
6. Right on Red Enforcement. No contracts shall require municipalities to strictly issue tickets on all right turns that do not first come to a complete stop, or enable vendors to impose financial penalties on cities that choose to alter their enforcement standards unless it can be shown that pedestrians are at greater risk at that particular intersection. Upon evidence of a greater risk to pedestrians, the city shall first take engineering solutions steps to reduce the risk to pedestrians.
   
   
7. Ticket Quotas. Contracts shall not include language that could penalize municipalities if they do not approve enough tickets, effectively setting a ticket quota and undermining the authority of local officials to decide which violations warrant citations. No contracts shall give camera vendors the ability to veto proposed camera locations, sometimes referring to a minimum ticket number or revenue requirement.
   
   
8. Early Termination. No contract shall include penalties for early termination or fail to provide provisions for early termination even if the camera program fails to meet its objectives.

Sincerely,