Saint Louis City’s system violates due process because  tickets sent to alleged violators do not contain information about a court hearing date or the right to contest. That means, attorney Bevis Schock (a Show-Me Institute board member) told KMOX, that “. . . there’s no way the defendant, the person receiving the notice, understands that there’s a right to a hearing.”

Hopefully this ruling will help bring about the elimination of red light cameras in Missouri. In our state, red light cameras have not been shown to increase safety. But they are popular, perhaps because they can help a city raise a great deal of revenue from traffic tickets.

This latest ruling throws the continued operation of red light cameras in Saint Louis City into question. One Saint Louis attorney has said that he would advise family members to not pay red light camera tickets because the penalty for the ticket appears to be just threatening letters from a company in Texas.

In related news, at the most recent Columbia City Council meeting, city officials reported that the installation of red light cameras had resulted in more than a four-fold increase in tickets. The city has issued more than 3,500 tickets since the cameras were installed in September 2009, compared to an average of about 330 tickets before the cameras were installed.

And earlier this year, Kansas City found that red light cameras in its city had not increased safety, as promised. In fact, the study found that both accidents and fatal accidents had increased at a majority of intersections where red light cameras are installed.

For more information about the policy questions regarding red light cameras, watch Show-Me Institute Policy Analyst David Stokes’ recent vlog on the Saint Louis red light camera issue, or check out our “Policing By Camera” panel discussion with Lembke, Saint Louis Alderman Antonio French, and Redditt Hudson of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The post Another Judge Rules Saint Louis’ Red Light Camera System Unconstitutional appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Since January 2009, accidents increased at 11 of 17 monitored intersections, and fatal crashes increased at 13 of those locations. Kansas City is not the first to see this happen with its red light camera program. The Star interviewed University of Illinois at Chicago Assistant Professor Rajiv Shah, who studied a red light camera program in Chicago:

“I’d say [Kansas City’s results are] very consistent with what cities across America have found . . . There’s really not a hard connection between reducing accidents and red-light cameras.”

The results of this study should have red light camera proponents reevaluating their positions. As we have pointed out before, red light cameras have many problems: they invade privacy and create a constitutionally suspect presumption of guilt. They are also prone to mistake. Brenda Talent, executive director of the Show-Me Institute, was fined for a violation she did not commit in Kansas City last year, and 1,000 lucky drivers were falsely accused of running red lights in Arnold, Mo., just two weeks ago.

Not surprisingly, American Traffic Solutions, the company that runs the program, publicly criticized the police department’s findings. ATS identified weather patterns, impaired drivers, and cell phone usage as the cause for increased wrecks. In other words, ATS identified anything but the red light cameras, which the company receives $1.6 million a year to operate, as the culprit for the increased crashes.

Despite the police study, it is likely that camera proponents will not rest. The Star editorial focused on a study by city engineers that found a decrease in total violations at monitored intersections. The Star praised the decrease in violations and declared that “red light cameras are working in Kansas City.” Fewer people running red lights, maybe; but if more accidents are occurring at monitored intersections, it is a stretch to conclude that red light cameras improve safety just because total violations have dropped.

Much to the dismay of proponents like the Star, the police study just confirmed what we already knew. Red light cameras are not about public safety, they are about generating revenue through traffic enforcement. The program has been very lucrative in Kansas City. The police study reports that officers have written nearly 200,000 tickets at $100 per ticket — adding $20 million to the city coffers.

The post Red Light Cameras Fail To Improve Safety In Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

You can read the entire ruling here.

The post An End to Red Light Cameras in Saint Louis? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Second, it appears that the state’s business franchise tax will be eliminated. This was a key part of the legislature’s “Fix the Six” agenda, and the governor has indicated that he will sign the legislation phasing out the tax. This is a tax change that will benefit all businesses in the state (at least all large enough to qualify to pay it) — not just those chosen for special tax treatment.

So far this week, we have serious movement on lower taxes, reduced government intrusions, fewer government officials, and municipal disincorporation. Although all of those things may not come through, I’d say this has been a great week.

The post More Progress in Fight for Less Government in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Brenda disagreed with the charge that she had run the red light for four reasons:

1. She tries very hard not to run red lights, and to obey other traffic laws.
2. Neither she, nor any member of her family, was in Kansas City on Feb. 16.
3. The car in the video was not her car.
4. The license plate in the photo was not her plate.

Outside of those four reasons, Kansas City had a really good case. Brenda, as the head of a free-market policy organization with a history of opposing these red light cameras as a money-raising device ineffective policy, was in a unique position to enjoy this letter. For just about every other Missourian, something like this is a major pain. Even if you are wrongly accused, the prospect of losing more time and money may well mean that it’s more worthwhile to make it just go away by paying the fine than to fight it. More offensive to me than the mistaken fine, though, is the assumption of guilt implicit in having a camera decide that you are guilty and need to pay a fine. If I ever had any faith in the fact that a police officer is “supposed” to be “reviewing” these tickets, I’ve lost that faith after seeing that an officer signed off on a ticket for the wrong car with the wrong plate. Brenda admits that the plate looked similar — they confused a “V” with a “Y” — but the car wasn’t all that similar.

From Brenda’s perspective as a responsible adult, the story has a happy ending. From my perspective as a blogger, it has a terrible ending. Brenda called the customer service line of the red light camera company, and was able to discuss all of the above issues in a call that took about 20 minutes. The customer service representative — Kyle from Tempe — promised that the company would put this ticket into their review category. The Show-Me Institute is in a pretty unique situation, so we might be the only people in Missouri who would hope for the bureaucratic nightmare, so we’d have something even more interesting to write about. Sure enough, though, the evidence was so bad that they rescinded the ticket, so our nightmare did not emerge. Still, it took Brenda about 20 minutes of her time to work out the situation.

(I wonder whether Kyle’s father-in-law set him up in a starter home in suburban Tempe.)

The post Red Light Camera Tickets Strike the Show-Me Institute appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A online shout-out to former intern Phil for bringing this story to my attention.

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Policing by Camera, a panel Q&A – Show-Me Institute
from Show-Me Institute on Vimeo.

French has spent nearly a year trying to get surveillance cameras installed in some of the high-crime areas of his ward. He maintains that the cameras will help police officers identify criminals, while deterring crime.

Lembke has argued against the use of red light cameras. The cameras, he says, violate due process because the owner of a car seen running a red light is presumed guilty — even if the camera cannot identify the driver.

If you are interested in how our local elected officials view the trade-offs between liberty and security, I encourage you to watch this video. Both the moderator and the public asked probing questions, which Lembke and French answered thoughtfully.

I hope that we can host similar, engaging discussions in the future. You can check back on this blog, join our email list, or become a fan of the Show-Me Institute to get updates about future events.

The post Red Light Camera and Surveillance Camera Discussion Now Online! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In 2008, Mark Jenney was issued a ticket for traveling 79 mph in a 60 mph zone. At his municipal trial, the charge was revised to 70 in a 60 mph zone. Radar results were deemed inadmissible at all trial levels.

Traffic violation cases are increasingly becoming the locus of a fundamental reinterpretation of the rights of the accused, in ways that already begin to set a wider precedent for shift the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused.

Take, for example, the 2009 case of Gant Bloom in St. Louis, who fought — and won — his red-light camera ticket appeal. Representing himself, Bloom successfully argued that he could not be charged with running a red light, because the city could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he, rather than his girlfriend, was the driver of his BMW at the time of the incident.

The recent ruling in Ohio provides yet another reason why Missourians ought to be concerned about how traffic cases are handled, lest this nascent precedent that abrogates the rights of the accused for traffic violations be spread to other states and other areas of law.

The post No Radar Love in Ohio appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A 2008 study published in the Florida Public Health Review surveyed the literature on red light cameras and found that they actually increased the number of accidents at red light intersections. Here are some of the study’s key findings:

• Comprehensive studies from North Carolina, Virginia, and Ontario have all reported cameras are significantly associated with increases in crashes, as well as crashes involving injuries. The study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council also found that cameras were linked to increased crash costs.

• Some studies that conclude cameras reduced crashes or injuries contained major “research design flaws,” such as incomplete data or inadequate analyses, and were conducted by researchers with links to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The IIHS, funded by automobile insurance companies, is the leading advocate for red-light cameras. Insurers can profit from red-light cameras, since their revenues will increase when higher premiums are charged due to the crash and citation increase, the researchers say.

Langland-Orban said the findings have been known for some time. She cites a 2001 paper by the Office of the Majority Leader, U.S. House of Representatives, reporting that red-light cameras are “a hidden tax levied on motorists.” The report concluded cameras are associated with increased crashes, the timings at yellow lights are often set too short to increase tickets for red-light running, and most research concluding cameras are effective was conducted by one researcher from the IIHS. Since then, studies independent of the automobile insurance industry continue to find cameras are associated with large increases in crashes.

In the two years since the study was published, there have been numerous reports of cities shortening the length of yellow lights at intersections, which leads to even more accidents, purely in the name of generating more revenue from tickets. If the evidence showed that red light cameras made the roads safer, I would not complain, but they simply encourage cash-strapped city governments to deliberately make them less safe, so they can rake in some much-needed revenue. That’s an unacceptable set of incentives, and Missouri should put a stop to it.

Full disclosure: I did just get a ticket from the city of Saint Louis for running a red light equipped with a camera. I didn’t actually run the light, but a rolling right turn is apparently also illegal.

The post A Ban I Actually Support appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The executive board of the Missouri Police Chiefs Association says it has officially endorsed red-light cameras “as part of a comprehensive traffic safety enforcement toolbox that should remain available to reduce deaths and injuries on our roads.”

This stance runs counter to that of the St. Louis Police Officers Association, which came out earlier this month against the cameras.

I would really like to see why the state’s police chiefs believe red-light cameras are actually a safety tool, despite the contrary conclusions of several studies. Either way, it is a very interesting split among the people enforcing the tickets. We’ll be sure to keep you updated on any and all movement that we see on this issue.

The post Police Split on Red Light Cameras appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I don’t know how I’m expected to follow this law when even the lawmakers don’t. Apparently, civil liberties are something to worry about only when your own are threatened.

*If you squint hard enough at the top right corner of the photo in the article, you can kind of see my apartment.

The post Red Light Cameras Fail to Watch the Watchmen appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I did know that red light camera aggravation was not exclusive to Americans, but now I know it’s not even exclusive to humans. Unlike in Missouri, German red light cameras require your face in the picture in order to press charges. Their cameras are specifically designed to block out the passenger’s face to keep them anonymous. Well, this could be taken advantage of by driving a British car.

This picture is not faked, altered, Photoshopped, or edited in any way. It’s Animal, in all his glory, sticking it to the man.

Any Muppet lovers or red light haters can find more info about the subject here.

The post The Muppets vs. Red Light Cameras appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But there was a piece of good news. The number of traffic crashes in St. Peters dropped 34 percent between 2005 and 2007 — though the report acknowledged that attributing the decline solely to red light cameras is problematic.

"While experiencing a reduction in crashes both citywide and at the target sites, the impact of red light photo enforcement on driver behavior may be difficult, if not impossible, to quantify," the report said.

Some studies have found that while red light cameras can help reduce side crashes, they can increase the number of rear-end accidents, as drivers slam on their brakes to keep from setting off the cameras.

Townsend said St. Peters has yet to determine whether the number of rear-end accidents has gone up.

In fact, the cameras do increase rear-end collisions — as several studies have shown. I don’t think anyone would deny that an increase in people covering their faces as they go through intersections is a bad thing. This can’t help but lead to an increase in accidents of just about any type, from front-end collisions to Dukes of Hazzard–style river jumping:

Police refer to them as "duckers" — drivers who try to shield their faces from red light cameras as they run signals at intersections watched 24/7 by electronic traffic enforcers.

The city of St. Louis maintains no such pretense of making sure the owner is the actual driver, nor do officials even pretend to care about anything other than raising revenue:

[T]he city of St. Louis is pulling in substantial revenue. Of nearly $2 million in total ticket revenue in the past year, the city has kept about $1.6 million, said Ron Smith, the city’s operations director.

Cameras in St. Louis don’t take pictures of drivers’ faces, so the city does not have the problem with duckers that St. Peters faces.

To be fair, if you go to court in the city and swear under penalty of perjury that you were not the driver, you can get the ticket dismissed. The best thing about people in local government is being able to watch your neighbors work to build a better community, and dedicate large amounts of time and effort to their city. The worst thing about some (not all, just some) of the people in local government is that they are all about the immediate and local issues, and have no knowledge of — or, more likely, just don’t care about — broader issues, like how red-light cameras and eminent domain abuse take away our liberty, piece by piece. (In the case of cameras, its the liberty to be presumed innocent that’s under assault, among other things.) So I hope we see an end to red-light cameras sometime soon.

The post Red-Light Camera Reviews Are In! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Finally, Some Push-Back on Red Light Cameras! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.