Whoa, Look Out, It’s a Traffic Camera!

I read about traffic cameras in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal in a column by Holman W. Jenkins Jr. He writes that the American Automobile Association has turned against them—it’s because these ubiquitous cameras, placed in the beginning to help police against muggings, have turned into money machines for governments.

One tabloid, The Sunday Mail, sent reporters undercover posing as buyers for Eastern European governments. The salesmen were breathless about the devices…”They catch businessmen going to work in the morning and school-run mums in the afternoon…the money will come in in buckets!”

In Washington DC, Mayor Anthony Williams is pleased with the $30 million a year reaped from those drivers who are mailed the traffic tickets. Then the Washington Post found that many accidents were caused by people suddenly slowing down when they saw the cameras, and then were rear-ended. Oops!

In Britain, most of the cameras have been given plate-reading capability. “As a result, Britons are increasingly being surprised by tickets in the mail for making illegal U-turns or dropping passengers in no-loading zones, even in lonely hours when no one is around to notice or care. Ka-ching!”

The AAA has accused Washington DC of targeting Maryland commuters by strategically placing cameras on New York Avenue and other roads used by mostly by out-of-towners. The Republican governor of Maryland recently vetoed a plan for more traffic cameras, saying there’s no data that cameras will slow speeders, and worried about “how citizens defend themselves against a digital device.”