Opinion: Government: No respite from red-light cameras

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Aww, crudmonkeys. It looks like California cities will be free to continue engaging in this century’s version of a high-tech speed trap — Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill to restrict the use of automated red-light cameras.

For those of you who haven’t encountered one yet, the red-light camera systems are designed to take a picture of a car’s license plate when it runs a red light — typically just after the light changes from yellow to red — or makes an illegal right turn on red. The enforcement agency then mails a ticket to the registered owner of the car, who may or may not have been the driver.

Public opposition and enforcement issues have led several cities, including Los Angeles, to end their camera programs. But many other communities continue to use the systems, costing car owners an estimated $140 million in fines each year.

The bill (SB 29) by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) would have applied uniform standards for the installation and use of red-light cameras by local governments. Among other things, it would have required them to post a notice at every corner where a camera was in use (and only at those corners), and it would have barred cities from considering how much profit they could generate before intalling any new cameras. Instead, cities would be required to make a factual finding that a camera was needed for safety reasons before installing it.

So far, the safety record of red-light cameras is mixed at best. An audit by City Controller Wendy Greuel found no overall improvement in safety at the 32 Los Angeles intersections with cameras. And a 2005 analysis by the Washington Post found that the accident rate went up at least as fast or faster at D.C. intersections with the camera systems than at those without them. On the other hand, a study released this year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that the systems led to a faster reduction in fatal collisions caused by red-light runners.

You could argue that Simitian’s proposed restrictions on new installations would have been easy to circumvent. It doesn’t seem like much of a challenge to find a traffic engineer willing to attest to the danger of just about any intersection busy enough to merit a signal. Requiring that drivers be warned with signs wherever cameras were in use, on the other hand, would be a welcome change. Such an approach to notification might help reduce accidents by persuading drivers to stop at red lights rather than trying to race through intersections at the last second. Granted, they’d probably reduce the revenue the cameras generated, but that’s not supposed to be the rationale for installing them.

Brown’s veto message was terse. ‘This bill standardizes rules for local governments to follow when installing and maintaining red light cameras,’ he wrote. ‘This is something that can and should be overseen by local elected officials.’

Ordinarily it’s a good idea to let local governments manage their own affairs. But people drive cars routinely across the invisible lines dividing one local jurisdiction from the next. That’s why the state should insist on a common approach to traffic enforcement in general, and red-light cameras in particular.

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-- Jon Healey