Traffic Cameras!

[snoopdan 5,000+ posts]

I was roaming around on msnbc today and ran across this concerning my home town, College Station, TX.

You rip open the envelope and there it is: Another darned photo-enforcement traffic ticket.
The photograph, the zoom-in on the tag, it's you, baby. Your car. Two weeks ago. Forty-one in a 30-mph zone.

It's from your favorite municipality. You can pay $40 now or $80 later. You can also contest it, the infraction letter says, and that's a laugh. You remember seeing that the folks who went down to fight their automated tickets in Montgomery County got convicted 99.7 percent of the time. Like a Soviet election, you think, a sham, a joke, and you, the chump in the parade.

People get worked up. Put these cyborgs on a ballot, and the voters beat them to the pavement.

Three cities Tuesday — two in Ohio, one in Texas — voted to rip the things down. In College Station, Tex., the camera manufacturer and their subcontractors reportedly spent $60,000 campaigning to keep them in place, more than five times the amount raised by the opposition, and lost anyway. Voters in Chillicothe, Ohio, went against the cameras at a rate of 72 percent. In Heath, Ohio, the mayor got caught removing anti-camera campaign signs from an intersection. He, and the cameras, got sent packing.

A College Station activist started his campaign because he said they were a violation of due process, that there was no appeal beyond a municipal hearing. Red-light or speed cameras or both are banned in all or part of 14 states. The Republican governor of Mississippi kicked them out of the Magnolia State earlier this year. The Democratic governor of Montana did the same in July. Sulphur, La., put the issue to a vote in April — and 86 percent of the populace voted to get rid of them.

The sheriff of Pinal County, Paul Babeu, took office in January and got rid of all the speed cameras the next day. Says they don't cut down on accidents, that they tie fundraising to law enforcement and that they render people "guilty until proven innocent."

"It's tilted our whole system of what we believe in. It's an affront to our citizens and to many of us who serve in law enforcement," he says.

One guy who lives outside of Phoenix, Dave Vontesmar, hated the cameras so much he put on a monkey mask to drive to work every day, to keep the front-facing cameras from identifying him. Racked up 37 tickets that could amount to $6,500 in fines. Says the state can't prove it's him, which it has to do in his state. And, not funny at all, a technician was servicing a speed camera on Loop 101 in Phoenix back in April. An irate motorist shot him to death.

Overseas, people in Finland have destroyed them with explosives. Vandals in Britain attack them at the rate of 100 a year.

I didn't figure these were going to last too long in the good ole U S of A.

discuss?

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[jmanpc 5,000+ posts]

Glad I havent had a run-in with them yet.

 

[DBfan187 5,000+ posts]

pop them bitches off from a distance like a sniper

 

[snoopdan 5,000+ posts]

pop them bitches off from a distance like a sniper

like gorilla's in da mist //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

 

[DBfan187 5,000+ posts]

naw like my nga Lee Harvy Oswald

boom skeezy

 

[snb778 5,000+ posts]

i can't stand how I see those things flashing constantly through a busy intersection...seems like they go off for no reason at all... rate of like 5 snaps every 10-20 seconds... they gotta be makin a killin off those things... people don't have the time of day to appeal them even if the camera is wrong

 

[ryl515 10+ year member]

So apparently the cameras at the traffic lights take a picture every whatever seconds. My sister came to a light, stopped, no one was coming, turned right on red, and everythings cool right? Nope. The camera took a picture of her driving up as the light is red, and then going while the light is still red. She received a ticket in the mail and said **** it and just paid it.