It comes as no surprise that red light cameras are a financial windfall for the District of Columbia. Mayor Anthony Williams has admitted several times that the red-light and speeding cameras are about generating revenue. Then again, Williams also lobbied to increase the number of government agencies and personnel down town, and then whined that a commuter tax was needed to pay for the increased burden.

The Washington Times has the skinny:

The District has collected more than $66 million in fines from its automated traffic-enforcement program since installing red-light cameras in 1999 and speeding cameras in 2001.

That's 66 million reasons why the cameras are here to stay.

Metropolitan police and city officials have long said that safety, not revenue, drives the District's automated traffic enforcement, which they say has helped them create safer streets with less manpower.

"With the technology we have now, it's no longer necessary to pull over [speeding motorists] one by one," Metropolitan Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said in a recent interview. "It's allowed us to effectively reduce speeding without having to occupy officers."

If you don't pull them over, just how does the camera stop someone from speeding? I guess in the same way that gun control, cameras and armed guards stopped D.C. school shootings.

According to police statistics, the red-light cameras are issuing about 22,800 fewer citations a month than they did when they were first installed in 1999. In addition, about 5.4 percent of the nearly 1 million vehicles monitored by photo-radar cameras last month were speeding, compared with 25.5 percent when the city began issuing citations based on photo-radar in 2001.

But is that really a measure of safety, or does it mean that people have learned where the cameras are?

While showing that fewer vehicles are being photographed running red lights or speeding, the police statistics don't necessarily indicate whether automated traffic enforcement has reduced the number of traffic accidents, traffic fatalities or otherwise made city streets safer.

"We don't have any substantial statistics of crashes predating the use of the cameras, so we can't draw a direct [correlation] between cameras and number of crashes," said Kevin P. Morison, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department.

If there was no pre-camera data to draw on, how do they know the cameras are making things safer? How do they know there was even a problem in the first place. (They don't.)

Also, governments routinely sweep crash statistics under the rug because pundits are trying to show that red light cameras actually increase crashes caused by people slamming on their brakes unnecessarily.

However, Mr. Morison said that traffic deaths attributable to speed are on the decline.

"Preliminary investigations by our crash unit show that traffic fatalities in which speed is identified as the primary cause have steadily declined [since the cameras were implemented]," he said. "In 2001, 39 of 71 deaths were attributed to speed; in 2002, 30 of 50. Last year, only 21 of 69 were caused by speed."

Talk about trying to have it both ways. First they don't have any statistics; now they have statistics.

Over the past 10 years, D.C. traffic fatalities have fluctuated between a high of 72 in 1994 and a low of 47 in 1999, according to police statistics.

So traffic fatalities were on the decline from 1994 to 1999, but the continued decline post-1999 is attributed to the newly installed cameras. Don't you just love how that works. Meanwhile modern cars now feature numerous mandatory safety features such as driver and passenger side airbags. ABS brakes are also becoming more of the norm. I wonder, could that have anything to do with the decline in fatalities??

D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams in September 2002 said he wanted to expand the use of automated traffic cameras because the city needed the money.

"The cameras are about safety and revenue, and the way not to pay that tax is to not be speeding," the Democratic mayor said at a news conference. But Mr. Morison said that city officials' "motivation [for using the cameras] is and always has been safety, whether some people choose to believe that or not."

So at least Williams is honest, whereas Morison is a shyster.

The Affiliated Computer Services of Dallas manages the city's automated traffic-enforcement program and splits the fines with the District, which deposits the revenue into the general fund.

That's code for a commission. That means the manufacturer of the camera gets a cut of every ticket, and thus has a vested interest in maximizing revenue at the expense of D.C. drivers.When it comes to safety, the common sense approaches are still the best. For red lights, the easiest way to make an intersection safer is to lengthen the yellow light to allow the johnny-come-lately drivers to clear the intersection. But there's no money in that. (In fact, some governments actually made a shorter yellow to maximize camera profits.)

To cut down on speeding, nothing makes people step on the brake quicker than seeing a police car on the side of the road. Even if the car is empty or even just a cardboard cut out, it is still more effective than a camera that will mail you a ticket 4 weeks after the fact. But then that doesn't bring in much money either.

Related articles:
Automated enforcement is about money, not safety - 08/26/2003
L.A. County caught in red light scam-era - 05/16/2003
DC Mayor admits red light cameras are cash cow - 10/17/2002
Red Light Cameras - 08/18/2002