[From Naperville Stopping Some Red-Light Camera Tickets]
Naperville is going to stop using red light cameras for ticketing right turns (at most intersections). This is a very sensible policy, since right turn traffic violations are usually not a significant safety risk (especially compared to people running straight through red lights). It’s good to see a city treat its citizens fairly and not find a sneaky way to extract some money out of them.
rshah Chicago, Red Light Cameras
[From Surveillance with privacy in mind - Security Systems News]
To make surveillance more palatable, Brookline Massachusetts has installed Situcam cameras with a “physical lens cover that opens when the system is in use and closes in an obvious way when the cameras are not operational.” It is a very interesting idea, especially to convince people the cameras will not be used outside of defined times. In this case, the camera policy “mandates that the cameras only be on between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., or during an emergency situation.”
Here is some detail on the covers:
“The covers are reassuring,” DeWitt said. “You can see the cameras are not on, and that alleviates concerns that the cameras could be remotely controlled and that the operator might manipulate them into residents’ windows or something. So having the covers makes it abundantly clear that they can’t be used for other than safety purposes.”
Are the lens covers as much for public relations as anything else? “They’re redundant,” he admitted, as the software alone can control when the cameras are on or off and who has access, “but they’re crystal clear. The teachers or town workers know there’s no chance they’re being monitored.
The lens covers and software work with many camera types (it was a Bosch system here in Brookline), and while SituCon did the integration here as one of its first big customers, Cirker said the company is looking for dealers and partners to help make the technology more widely available and known.
I am a fan of this idea and want to point out it came out of citizen involvement in polices for the use of the cameras:
How has Brookline come so far in its willingness to accept public surveillance? A lot of hard work by a citizen oversight committee that developed policies for the use of the surveillance system that made sense for the community, with a helping hand from the Constitution Project and technology provided by SituCon.
rshah Applications, Other Cities
Part 1 of this report considered accident trends in Chicago between 2001 and 2008. Part 2 focuses on accidents at traffic signals. Part 3 offers data on accidents at red light camera intersections based on IDOT data.
This part analyzes accident data obtained from the city of Chicago. The city’s study looks at 20 RLC intersections and 20 control intersections and compares them. The control intersections are supposed to be similar intersections to the RLC intersections in terms of traffic and accident rates. By using control intersections, it is possible to isolate the effect of the red light cameras from other factors affecting accidents, e.g., people driving less.
The study compares the accidents 1 year prior to the startup date to accidents 1 year after the start up date for the red light cameras. In evaluating the study, we had to eliminate 10 of the intersections, both control and RLC, because they did not have a full 12 months of prior data. This left us with 10 control intersections and 10 RLC intersections.
The control group experienced a 3.8% decrease in accidents, while the RLC group experienced a 5.3% decrease in accidents. In sum, there was only a 1.5% different attributable to the RLCs. This suggests a very small benefit for the RLCs. This decrease is a much smaller figure than the city claims.
This study was conducted entirely by the city of Chicago. The report is dated October 2007. The departments involved were the OEMC and the Traffic Management Authority. The study was not made public. I received the data after a FOIA request that required the assistance of the Illinois ACLU to push the city to release this information.
I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this study. The city picked the camera locations to study. I have no idea if they tried to “massage” the data to gain beneficial results. The city is planning a followup report due later this summer. As far as I know, they do not having any impartial experts involved in the process. I hope the city’s analysis will be fair, rather than manipulating the data to justify the effectiveness of the red light cameras.
rshah Chicago, Red Light Cameras
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