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March 17, 2005
Red Light Cameras
The Texas House has passed a bill that would prohibit citations from cameras at red lights.
The Houston Chronicle reports that
In another traffic-related vote Tuesday, the committee sent to the full House a bill that would prohibit use of cameras to catch red-light violators. The Houston City Council has voted to install cameras at as many as 50 intersections, issuing civil citations to the owners of cars the cameras photograph running red lights. Tickets written by officers still would be criminal citations against drivers.The House passed a bill earlier this session, sponsored by Rep. Gary Elkins, R-Houston, to keep the city from issuing civil citations for red-light violators. That bill and the one sent to the House Tuesday face uncertain fates in the Senate.
I am in favor of this bill as I think red light cameras do not allow people ticketed to adequately confront their accuser and because they have a great potential for abuse by municipalities. There have been instances of cities shortening yellow lights to catch more offenders to increase revenue.
The cameras also do not know how to distinguish between those who reasonably break the law and those who unreasonably break the law. For instance there is one light for a left hand turn lane in San Antonio that sometimes will not change. I have turned on a red light there before in the middle of the night, but only when there are no other cars around and after waiting for over five minutes for the light to change. If there was a camera there I would have had to wait indefinitely or would have had to go backwards to get into another lane.
Here is another example of red light camera problems from Ed Cone (via instpundit).
Posted by Pete at March 17, 2005 03:07 PM
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