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.