Red Light Camera Company Uses Fake PSAs to Scare the Public
Against a tide of lawsuits, angry motorists, and hard evidence proving the danger of red light cameras, American Traffic Solutions has gone on the offensive, running television advertisements pretending to be public service announcements funded by the “National Coalition for Safer Roads”, a group backed by ATS and revenue-hungry government officials.
(Even their logos look alike.)
NCSR’s affiliation with American Traffic Solutions is quietly hidden at the bottom of their “About” page:
http://saferoadssavelives.org/about-us/
Fast Tube by Casper
The so-called “coalition” asks the public to “tell Missouri leaders we want safer roads.” Its a vaguely uncontroversial statement; the ad offers testimonials from police, fire fighters, and doctors (trauma centers receive a share of ticket revenue, by the way).
ATS installs the cameras and handles the billing and collection of tickets, which generally stay off driver records but can be sent to collections if left unpaid. A percentage of the revenue is retained by ATS as a fee while your local government collects the rest.
You may be thinking, “What harm can a camera do? It catches people who break the law.”
Consider that the cameras purported to save lives actually cause more accidents and deaths:
http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2011/feb/23/studiessay-red-light-camerasdont-savelives-151/
To boost ticket revenue, yellow lights in some municipalities have been shortened to catch more drivers. While longer yellow lights do nothing to generate revenue and line the pockets of surveillance companies, they’re proven life savers:
“Honest yellows are Kryptonite to dishonest cameras. One added second of yellow to any signal reduces violations 40-80 percent and, unlike cameras, actually reduces crashes 25-50 percent. Honest yellows killed red-light cameras in 12 Georgia cities, Dallas and Mesa, Ariz.”
And for the few you who still care about your freedom and the little rag known as the constitution, the cameras and their automatic fines are a violation of due process. In the state of Florida, the tickets and camera footage are not required to be reviewed by a member of law enforcement.
The voters in the city of Houston (NOT the politicians) voted to disable red light cameras:
Fast Tube by Casper
Nearby in Jefferson County, ATS voluntarily ended its contract to save face as the newly elected county council was prepared to void it.
If you want hard evidence on the dangers of red light cameras, here you go:
http://www.bhspi.org/mauz/
So, consider this my own public service announcement: Tell American Traffic Solutions and your legislators how you feel about this invasive, dangerous, ineffective, and expensive technology and their underhanded advertisements masquerading as PSAs.
Click “Like” on their Facebook page (you have to click Like to be able to post) and leave comments on their Youtube channel:
http://www.facebook.com/SaferRoadsUSA
http://www.youtube.com/user/SaferRoadsUSA
http://www.facebook.com/ATSolutions
My hometown of Spokane, WA added these to 2 intersections. All the money was to go to “traffic safety projects”, but in reality it went into the general fund because the city council stripped the existing budget and replaced it with the red light camera revenue.
The local paper ran an article showing through public records that the red light cams either made no difference or caused higher accidents. The city’s response?
They added them to more intersections, saying that the existing ones “hadn’t been in place long enough to tell if they were effective or not”.
These intersections are mysteriously lacking the new crossing-signals that give you a 14 second countdown on them to when the light turns yellow, even though they’ve popped up all over town elsewhere. Why? Because it would reduce their revenue by letting people know when the light was going to change.
The evidence is mounting that red light cameras do not reduce accidents as much as lengthening the yellow intervals, that red light cameras often raise the accident rate, that the public rejects them in public referendums, and that the public is coming to understand they are revenue devices.
Ticket cameras are just a cynical means to make money with improper and/or unethical traffic management policies. Citizens should DEMAND that yellow intervals be increased by a full second before cameras are put in place. In most cases, this will drop the straight through violation rate far enough that the cameras would no longer be profitable and the scamera vendors will withdraw bids. Please read more on our website.
I am lucky, I live in a state where these predatory devices are illegal, but they should be illegal everywhere.
Regards, James C. Walker, Member – National Motorists Association, http://www.motorists.org, Ann Arbor, MI
I posted to the site… but they of course removed all my posts. So I unliked and reported the page as a scam instead.
It was only after getting a red light camera ticket that I became involved in the matter. Appealing my ticket cost over 50% more than paying the ticket, bug I appealed anyway because of the principle. If we don’t take red light cameras’ breach of the Constitution seriously, at what point do we take a breach seriously? I, of course, lost my appeal, but refused to ever pay.
I found that no one where I live is pursuing anything to rid us of these travesties. Who can I join with locally to work to get rid of red light cameras in at least the Northern suburbs of Chicago??
ATS has just been exposed as behind a lot of the pro-camera comments posted online. The expose caused the suspension of an ATS VP, who was posing as a resident of the various towns where he posted his comments. Source: Everett (WA) Daily Herald (heraldnet dot com), put “Kroske” in the search box
VP Kroske was just one of ATS’ spokesmen. Another is Mark Rosenker, former chair of the NTSB, now Advisor to the NCSR. Using his (’til now) top notch credentials, Rosenker was granted numerous pro-camera “guest columns” in papers nationwide. In those he mentioned his connection to the NCSR but never disclosed that the NCSR is supported by ATS. [Early in his career he did electronic monitoring for the campaign to re-elect Pres. Nixon. CRP (now known as CReeP), did the Watergate break-in, after which many of the conspirators were sent to prison, and Nixon resigned.]
ATS is also behind many of the “citizen supported” websites in towns where the company is entrenched. Source: bancams dot com. Put “stupid” in the search box