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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.
Scott Elliott is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He writes about education, city and suburban issues, politics, business, workforce and consumer issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > March > 18
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Editorial: Cameras can catch speeders, increase safety
Cameras mounted on street corners might not be the ideal way to enforce traffic laws, but it’s hard to argue with Dayton’s statistics.
The cameras are working.
They capture images of cars that ignore red lights and record their license plate numbers. The word has gotten out. That has made some dangerous streets safer. Problems with the system need to be addressed, the most pressing of which is that many drivers nabbed by the cameras ignore the citations they receive; consequences have been rare.
Even so, the city has a strong case to expand its use of cameras to issue citations also for speeding.
An outside company, contracting with the city, installed the cameras at its own cost between 2003 and 2005 at 10 intersections notorious for accidents.
While traffic accidents were trending down citywide before the cameras were put up, the decline at the camera sites are significantly deeper. In the past 18 months, accidents at the camera intersections were down 40 percent.
In addition, red-light violations recorded by the cameras have dropped by 72 percent. Even rear-end accidents are down 16 percent. In other cities, those crashes spiked at camera locations as drivers slammed on their brakes to avoid being caught by the camera.
Collections haven’t gone so well, primarily because the fines do not have the power of the courts behind them. Because there is no law officer or eyewitness involved, a city ordinance makes the fine a civil rather than criminal matter.
The Ohio Supreme Court in 2008 upheld a city’s right to treat camera-enforced offenses more like parking tickets than moving violations, which typically result in higher fines and points against the driver’s license. The debt owed by the driver to the city is legally binding and collected by the camera company, but criminal courts can’t enforce payment. If individuals think they’ve been cited erroneously — that someone else was driving their car, for instance — there is a formal appeal process.
Thousands of fines have gone unpaid. If drivers know they won’t be forced to pay, what incentive is there to pay attention to the cameras?
The company is now moving delinquent drivers more quickly to a collection agency, and the city is exploring changing its ordinances to allow for license and registration renewals to be blocked for unpaid camera fines.
Police Chief Richard Biehl wants to add more cameras on streets with the most speeders. The numbers support his case. Consider one example — the intersection of Third Street and Edwin C. Moses Boulevard.
For the 18-month study period, data from the cameras there showed 1,578 red-light violators were also driving at least 11 mph over the speed limit. A third of those cars were traveling at least 15 mph above the limit.
If the threat of a fine works to deter speeders the way it has for red-light violators, the added public safety alone makes trying it worthwhile.
Chief Biehl says he has no plans to completely replace traffic enforcement with cameras, but the reality is that there will be fewer police assigned to traffic duty as the police force shrinks due to budget cuts.
Using cameras to supplement officers’ eyes is making the most of technology.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Scott Elliott
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