Red-light runners beware: Cameras to catch you are coming

By BRAD COOPER

June 19, 2000 Web posted at: 4:28 PM EDT (2028 GMT)

OVERLAND PARK, Kansas (Kansas City Star) -- Surveillance cameras have become part of everyday life.

Withdraw money from the bank? There's a camera. Gamble at a casino? There's a camera. Buy cigarettes at the convenience store? There's a camera. Shop for clothes? Chances are there's a camera.

And soon there may be cameras watching you when you drive.

The Kansas Department of Transportation has selected Overland Park as the site of a yearlong program to test the use of cameras to catch drivers who run red lights.

Initially, Overland Park will not issue tickets based on pictures from the cameras. The program is a prelude to a highway department request for legislative approval to do so.

Authorities are looking at placing cameras at three Overland Park locations: 119th Street and Hawthorne Plaza; Metcalf Avenue and Interstate 435; and 95th Street and Quivira Road. Those locations are not set, however.

Red-light runners are blamed for 260,000 crashes nationwide each year, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, based in Arlington, Va. About 750 of those crashes involve fatalities.

Overall the number of crashes is on the rise. Fatal intersection collisions increased 16 percent between 1992 and 1998. All other crashes increased 5 percent.

Police and traffic-safety activists say that camera enforcement will deter red-light runners and cut the number of accidents at intersections. The Federal Highway Administration says that the presence of cameras will reduce red-light violations 20 percent to 60 percent.

"People run red lights because they think they can get away with it, and they don't want to sit and wait for the light," said Julie Rochman, a spokeswoman for the highway safety institute. "For the most part it's a deliberate act."

Critics say the cameras smack of an Orwellian nightmare, and some civil libertarians are concerned that the cameras threaten the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty.

"All you know from the camera for sure is that it was the automobile that was in violation of the ordinance," said Dick Kurtenbach, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri.

"You really have no clue based on the license who is driving the vehicle. You're going to have to have an alibi," he said.

A Maryland lawyer is suing the city of Baltimore over a $76 ticket he received March 6. Among other things, Imad K. Dajani charges the city with violating his constitutional right to due process. He contends that the law presumes the driver is guilty without requiring the city to prove a violation occurred.

Some legal experts are skeptical about those arguments.

Roscoe Howard, a University of Kansas law professor, said the courts tended to give government some latitude when public safety was at stake. Howard pointed to court rulings that allowed police to stop suspicious persons on the street without probable cause as long as they could articulate a reason for making the stop.

Likewise, Howard said, it would be reasonable for a court to allow cities to convict a red-light violator by merely identifying the car through its license plate and registration.

In 1992, Kansas City made a push to use cameras -- also known as photo radar -- to crack down on speeders. The proposal died after Jackson County circuit judges said the plan, essentially, would require vehicle owners to prove their innocence instead of forcing the city to prove guilt.

The cameras can be mounted to shoot either the front or the back of moving vehicles.

Cameras have been used to enforce traffic laws in Canada and Europe for nearly 30 years. In the United States at least 50 cities in 12 states have some kind of red-light camera enforcement. Those cities include Washington; Sacramento, Calif.; San Diego; Boulder, Colo.; and Fairfax, Va.

Officials from Kansas and Missouri say they do not know of a city in either state that uses cameras to enforce red lights. They say that legislation would be required in either state to allow cities to use red-light cameras and issue tickets.

A bill was introduced two years ago in the Missouri General Assembly to allow cities to install cameras to enforce traffic signals. The bill died, in part out of fear of unwarranted government intrusion.

"People didn't want to have cameras following them and keeping track of their whereabouts, even though that wasn't our intent," said the bill's sponsor, state Rep. Don Kissell, a Democrat from St. Peters.

"It was never our intent to convict people. Our intent was to tell people our intersections are being monitored, so don't violate the law."

A similar bill was introduced in the Nebraska Legislature last year but was not approved, because of concerns about due process.

Some cities, particularly those in California and Arizona, hold the driver of the vehicle responsible for the traffic violation.

In those states pictures are taken of the driver and the license plate. The violation is recorded on the driver's record and turned over to insurance companies.

Other cities, such as Baltimore and Charlotte, N.C., handle the citation like a parking ticket.

A photo is taken only of the license plate. Car owners are held responsible for paying the fine, although they can ask authorities to assign responsibility to the driver. No penalty is assessed against the car owner's driving record.

Studies indicate that automated traffic-signal enforcement has helped reduce accidents.

In Baltimore, for example, accidents were reduced by about 41 percent at six intersections where cameras were installed in February 1999.

Baltimore started out with six cameras. It now has 18 and plans to go to 48 by next year. From February 1999 through the end of May, 75,637 drivers had been ticketed by the cameras for running red lights.

The city has raised about $2.4 million in fines, not counting the part of the fine that goes to Lockheed Martin IMS for setting up the program and helping administer it.

Intersection crashes also were reduced in Charlotte after 20 cameras were installed in August 1998. To date, about 63,000 tickets have been issued for red-light runners since the program started.

The number of all crashes at Charlotte intersections dropped to 627 from 686 in the first year the cameras were in operation. The number of accidents in Charlotte caused by drivers running red lights dropped to 276 from 342 in the first year cameras were in operation.

Critics note that the cameras are moneymakers for cities. One target for criticism has been Washington, where officials were expecting to make an additional $16 million in fines this year and $14.5 million in future years.

One camera among the 37 posted in Washington attracted press attention in May when it was reported it was generating $10,000 a day in fines.

The Washington Post reported that the camera, described by some drivers as an ambush camera, billed $1.5 million in fines over six months.

Police later acknowledged that the camera was unfair and stopped using it to issue fines.

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