Takes a second to scrap photo radar

THE city of Norcross (population 9,887) in the state of Georgia has produced seven "famous residents" in its 138-year history.

The seven famous Norcrossians include one National Basketball Association player, four state level basketball players, one state level football player and one contestant on the first season of American Idol.

That's likely not a bad record for so small a city in a country the size of the United States, but it's not enough to put Norcross on the map, as they say.

And yet, Norcross's fame is spreading like wildfire, especially among cheering opponents and fearing supporters of photo radar.

Why? Because earlier this month it scrapped its photo radar system after it was exposed for the scam that it is.

And it only took a second to do it.

Last year, the Georgia General Assembly decreed that the length of time that amber lights burn before turning to red be increased to five seconds from four seconds.

Evidence showed that most red-light violations caught on photo radar happen within 0.25 seconds of the light changing from amber to red.

In other words, the red-light "violator" was in violation for one-quarter of a second, the blink of an eye.

When the second was added to the time the amber burned, the issuance of photo tickets plummeted 80 per cent.

The good news that flowed from that was two-fold. First, it meant that drivers who were not safety risks were not being punished for a technicality.

Second, it meant that only persons actually intent on running a red light were ticketed.

The bad news, however, was that in the absence of 80 per cent of revenue collected unfairly from normal drivers, the revenue from red-light violators was not sufficient to pay the private, for-profit photo radar provider.

And so rather than run a deficit to catch actual violations, Norcross city council voted to scrap the system.

If there is a more perfect demonstration of the cockeyed scam that photo radar has become, Larry Stefanuik has not yet posted it on his hugely informative website, trafficticketguru.com, where I first learned about Norcross.

Stefanuik, who took early retirement from the Winnipeg Police Service after 10.5 years in the traffic division, is no friend of speeders, but he's no friend of photo radar either, and hasn't been since Day 1.

And he hasn't been a friend of photo radar for exactly the reasons demonstrated by Norcross.

For photo radar to be successful, that is, to make money, or even to break even, it has to punish the innocent in order to catch the occasional guilty.

Why, just look what happened right here in River City. When photo radar revenues started to fall, the city didn't declare victory and live righteously on reduced revenue, even losses.

No, it increased the number of stealth cameras and started going after "speeders" in unlikely places and at ungodly hours.

The current uproar over photo radar scamming motorists in construction zones is the result of a decision two years ago to go after such sites despite evidence that less than one tenth of one per cent -- 44 of 42,250 accidents -- in Manitoba occurred in construction zones, and at that most of the accidents involve construction-related vehicles.

But boy-oh-boy! Setting up cameras in these zones churns out tens of millions of dollars for the for-profit photo-radar provider and the city.

Same in school zones. In the six years between 1999 and 2004, there were 15 accidents recorded in school zones of the tens of thousands in the city.

For reasons that the city refuses to give to Stefanuik, but which are pretty obvious on the face of the evidence, the city stopped reporting school ground accident statistics in 2005. It never has recorded construction zone accidents.

In 2004, the final reported year, one accident was reported in a school zone. And yet, school zones are where the cameras click merrily away.

And they don't do it where the kids are, where soccer moms are dropping off their darlings and the street is congested with school bus traffic and pedestrians. Oh no, never there.

They set up instead on chain-link lined streets where traffic is heaviest and the money flows like gravy.

Same with playgrounds.

I could write a book on this but I don't need to. It's all there on Stefanuik's website.

But two things before I go.

When it was installed on Route 90, the photo-radar camera at Silver Avenue was the highest producer in the city.

The speed limit on the freeway was a ridiculous 60 km/h. When the speed was raised to 70 km/h, Silver's lining disappeared.

On the one-second solution, the reason red-light cameras are such money- makers is because they create what is called the "dilemma zone." Drivers become conflicted -- speed up or slow down as they approach. Speeding up a little is enough to trigger a speeding ticket, slowing down gets you when the short amber turns red.

Stefanuik is promising some very interesting viewing -- photos of photo-radar scamming -- on his website Monday morning. You might check it out. I know I will.

gerald.flood@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 8, 2009 a13