The Clark Howard Show – December 15, 2008

Arizona Rakes in the Dough with Speed Cameras

Clark gets worried whenever state or local officials say they want to protect us by putting in cameras to monitor our speed while driving. The real purpose of such cameras is to make money.

The Detroit News reports that Arizona will make $175 million this year from speed cameras. They have an Australian contractor who handles everything: installation, ticketing and collections. The contractor gets $30 from every ticket with the remainder going to the state.

In fact, Arizona decided it wasn’t making enough revenue from the cameras, so they lowered the speed limit in the state to get more money! These tickets don’t come with any points on your license; they’re strictly against the car itself and just a form of tax.

Illinois and other states now want to install similar speed cameras. But don’t believe the political hype about these cameras being used to reduce the rate of highway fatalities. They’re simply designed to stock the coffers so politicians can get re-elected.

And get this — The Detroit News reports Arizona only puts the cameras on roads that are heavily driven by out-of-state motorists. So the revenue comes from non-voters because the politicians don’t want to alienate their constituents!

Clark doesn’t deny that speeding is dangerous and also necessitates longer stopping distances in the event of a panic stop. But these cameras are only about the dough. If they were really intended to make you a safer driver, the tickets would be against the driver, not against the car. So get ready to smile — you may be on candid camera!

Here’s a link to the shownotes page for that episode of The Clark Howard Show.

Officials from Maryland, Missouri and Tennessee joined Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich (D) at a two-day event designed to promote the use of speed cameras on freeways throughout the country. In 2006, Illinois became the first state government to implement a statewide photo ticketing program. This effort was soon copied by Arizona, Colorado and Washington state, each of which also sent participants to yesterday’s “highway safety workshop.” Officials attending heard about how successful these programs have been at imposing automated tickets worth up to $1000 each.

“One of the keys to this success has been the photo speed enforcement vans that have deployed by IDOT and the Illinois State Police,” Blagojevich said in a prepared statement about the event.

The participation of Missouri and Tennessee officials has revealed their states’ interest in using automated ticketing machines on freeways.

Although Illinois currently uses photo radar vans only in highway work zones, Blagojevich is working on legislation that would lift all restrictions and authorize deployment on every freeway in the state. The governor first sold the program as essential to “protecting highway workers.” Now that the program is in place, it is a simpler legislative task to expand its scope. This strategy, however, did not work for Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (D). Squabbling between state and local lawmakers regarding distribution of profits from a work zone camera program sunk a proposal that had passed both the state House and Senate earlier this year — despite lavish lobbying efforts by Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), the private company in charge of the Illinois program. Connecticut’s governor also failed in efforts to convince state lawmakers to approve freeway speed cameras.

Blagojevich is especially desperate to expand the program beyond work zones because experience has shown that lowered ticket fines issued at a higher volume would generate much more revenue. A Chicago Tribune investigation found that Cook County judges have been unwilling to uphold the state’s pricey $375 automated fines for a first offense and $1000 with 90-day license suspension for the second. Despite issuing 3478 tickets in the county with a face value of at least $1,304,250, the state ended up pocketing a small fraction of this amount. More than half of the fines were thrown out entirely, often because photos did not clearly identify the driver — a necessary step because these tickets also carry license points. In the remaining cases, judges refused to impose the massive fines on all but five percent of ticket recipients.

Although Illinois officials insist their primary interest has always been to protect workers from accidents caused by speeding drivers, studies show that only 15 percent of freeway construction zone injuries are actually caused by automobiles. The vast majority of work zone “vehicle” accidents were found to involve workers injured by their own construction equipment. An unreleased 2005 UK Department for Transportation report showed that the use of conventional speed cameras in construction zones caused a 55 percent increase in collisions.

Police in Scottsdale, Arizona arrested a man late Wednesday claiming he “obstructed” a photo radar van. Jason Shelton, 35, had been videotaping a pair of anti-camera activists at 6800 E. Shea Boulevard before being taken into custody. (This guy wasn’t even participating in the actual protest — He was only filming the protesters!!) The protesters held signs calling the speed camera program a rip-off and advertising the group CameraFraud.com in an impromptu demonstration. Shelton intended to post his video on Freedom’s Phoenix, an Arizona-based political opinion and news website. Enraged local officials did what they could to ensure that would not happen.

“The City of Scottsdale, including the police department, respects and protects an individual’s right to stage and/or participate in a lawful demonstration,” Scottsdale Police said in a statement. “However, behavior such as the intentional obstruction of a contracted photo enforcement van’s operation is not lawful and subject to enforcement action.”

Videotape of an earlier protest documented a similar demonstration. An activist held a sign reading “FRAUD” in front of a photo radar van’s camera as the fully automated system continued in a vain attempt to photograph passing traffic. At no point did the protester touch the photo radar van or its driver. The video also showed the van’s driver, an elderly man, used a cell phone presumably to ask his Australian employer, Redflex, for guidance on how to deal with the situation. At a subsequent protest, police were called to the scene after a phone call was made and Shelton was placed under arrest.

Scottsdale Police charged Shelton with “obstruction of government operations” (ARS 13-2402) and “refusing to provide truthful name when lawfully detained” (ARS 13-2412). The former charge requires Scottsdale to show that Shelton used or threatened to use “violence or physical force.” Video evidence showed the protest was entirely peaceful. Refusing to provide a name to a police officer is only a crime if that officer had a reasonable basis to believe the suspect had committed a crime. According to Shelton’s colleagues, his only crime was exercising his rights under the First Amendment.

“The person who was arrested was not a demonstrator, but rather a journalist who was videographing the event for local media site FreedomsPhoenix.com,” a statement on the CameraFraud website explained. “The person who was arrested never held up a sign the entire evening. Scottsdale Police never arrested the two persons who were actually holding signs.”

Scottsdale Police have a history of using arrest powers to intimidate political opposition and support the goals of its photo ticketing program. A judge released Shelton on his own recognizance on Thursday.

Arizona state police on Wednesday performed what could be their last arrest staged to generate publicity for the department’s lucrative photo enforcement program. On Wednesday, officers waited at Sky Harbor International Airport armed with professional quality video and still cameras to handcuff a twenty-one-year-old motorist as she returned from the International Softball Challenge in Sydney, Australia.

Authorities concieved the high-profile arrest after a speed camera photographed a yellow 2001 Lexus IS300 on a deserted stretch of the Loop 101 freeway on May 28 at 1:51am. (view photo). The camera claimed the vehicle owned by Mesa resident Britnee Bristow was traveling at 103 MPH in a 65 zone, allowing police to file “reckless driving” charges against the young vehicle owner.

Bristow returned Wednesday after spending several days playing the position of catcher on the US amateur softball team in an exhibition match against rival Australia. This had been Bristow’s first overseas trip that she paid for by raising $4500 in donations. When police called to ask her to forego the trip and spend time in jail instead, she refused to allow police to “ruin her dream.” This infuriated officers (oooohh…) who issued a statement condemning Bristow before she has been proved guilty of any crime.

“She demonstrated no regard for the safety of others with her reckless, criminal speeding which was captured by our stationary photo enforcement cameras,” Jeffrey Jacobs of the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s Photo Enforcement Unit said in a statement. “She knew what she did but refused to take responsibility for her actions. The law is very clear when it comes to criminal speeding and reckless driving.”

That law, in effect on May 28, was changed in June, inhibiting the ability of police to jail motorists over photographs. (Good!) In a move designed to boost the number of paid citations and limit legal challenges, the legislature stated that all tickets issued under the new statewide speed camera program are civil violations for which the statutory punishment is $165 with no license points (view law). Locally operated cameras may still issue criminal tickets.

Although the Department of Public Safety in its statement declared Bristow guilty before trial, Arizona photo enforcement systems have had a history of generating inaccurate citations. In January, 589 tickets were canceled after a pavement sensor malfunction generated erroneous speed readings. In July 2007, radar-based warning signs in Chandler displayed wildly inaccurate speed readings to passing motorists. In Scottsdale, a Redflex sensor accused a man of driving 147 MPH in a rented Hyundai Sonata in May 2006, even though the vehicle had a measured top speed of just 137 MPH. Around the same time, another black man had been given a white man’s speeding ticket. In 2005, the city was forced to refund a total of 1964 tickets after a mobile speed camera van operator for Redflex made a change in the software that removed date, time and speed information from every alleged violation.

Source: TheNewspaper.com

In a severe blow to the insurance industry, the cash-strapped Arizona state legislature yesterday approved an expansive speed camera program designed to boost state revenue by dropping license points and eliminating costly legal challenges. Governor Janet Napolitano (D) first announced the proposal in January, expecting it to generate $165 million in revenue from new $165 “civil” tickets mailed to vehicle owners.

The plan was adopted as part of a much larger $9.9 billion budget package that passed 16-10 in the state Senate and 31-29 in the House. Lawmakers had been desperate to find new ways to cover a $2 billion deficit. The approved budget authorizes the Department of Public Safety to hand a private company up to $20,361,300 to set up and operate speed cameras on freeways throughout the state. The first $3 million of net profit generated will go to police agencies to buy tasers, $4 million will go to the courts and the remainder will be deposited in the general fund for spending by lawmakers.

Until now, Arizona had been one of a handful of states, including California, Colorado and Illinois, to issue points against the driver’s license of the owner of a car accused by a machine of speeding. Although motorists may prefer not having points on their license, the change to a civil citation is designed to reduce costs and court challenges. Instead of proving a case beyond a reasonable doubt, the state will only need to show that it was “likely” that a vehicle was speeding. The owner of the car would then be liable, regardless of whether he was actually driving.

Operational costs are also reduced as extra cameras will no longer be needed to capture a driver’s face. Under civil rules, a snapshot of a license plate will suffice. That means the state will no longer lose tickets because, for example, sun glare obscured the driver’s face. Last year, a photo enforcement vendor recommended dropping points to boost the odds of photo ticketing’s statewide political survival.

On the other side of the issue, insurance companies, including the American Automobile Association (AAA) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, have spent millions promoting the use of photo ticketing technology with the hope that all such programs would eventually issue points. Outside the United States, nearly every country that uses speed cameras issues points, generating billions in revenue from annual premium surcharges. Insurance lobbyists were disappointed by yesterday’s vote. (Awww…)

A radar reading indicated Parker was going 96 mph in a posted 45 mph zone, police said. Peoria police said Parker admitted he was showing off his new Corvette for a friend. He faces an administrative investigation by the sheriff’s office in addition to paying the speeding ticket.