The Philadelphia Parking Authority will give $100 refunds to 4,390 motorists ticketed this year, because its red-light cameras were a little too quick on the draw.
Seven months after discovering that cameras were suffering from “premature activation” – but failing to determine the depth of the problem – the authority yesterday announced that it would wipe out the tickets at a cost to the agency of $440,000.
Inquirer columnist Daniel Rubin wrote that the cameras were calibrated incorrectly, and that a Central Pennsylvania man had challenged his ticket and won.
In February, when the Philadelphia began upgrading the cameras, the problems began. According to the authority, the contractor, American Traffic Solutions (ATS), set the cameras to snap more quickly than expected. Cities often split traffic revenue with camera vendors.
A spokesman for ATS confirmed that account. The error occurred because most ATS customers do not allow a grace period, and technicians sent to install the cameras did not include it in the programming, said Josh Weiss of ATS. He called it human error.
Success of red light cameras may not measured by the number of lives saved or accidents reduced but by the amount of revenue generated, according to speedcameras.org. Camera enforcement is all too often about power, authority, and money.
In Oregon, local authorities were caught red handed, reducing the yellow light timing “by mistake”. Beaverton, Oregon installed automated traffic violation cameras (with reduced timing on the yellow caution light) and made LOTS of money for the city. City officials denied it.
Then a KATU Portland television reporter showed them the video evidence. Government officials then admitted a “mistake” and reset the yellow lights to standard timing.
Trapster is a new mobile application that lets you see and share the location of speed traps right on your mobile phone or GPS device. Once installed, the app uses a combination of your device’s internal GPS capabilities, geocoding techniques, and voice transcription to alert you in real-time to any reported speed traps in your area.
Sites that create speed camera maps and monitor the surveillence network include SpeedCameras.org UK Speed Cameras, UK Speedtrap Guide,fighting-speeding-tickets.net, The Transportation Communications Newsletter and motorists.com.
