Smart Cameras Blog

[From Red-light camera loses backer :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Transportation]

Schaumburg is getting rid of its cameras because they do not prevent accidents. Schaumburg is bypassing easy revenue, but doing the right thing by evaluating cameras on the basis of safety and not revenue. Read the full article, but here are some snippets:

Last fall, Schaumburg installed red-light cameras at the busy corner of Woodfield and Meacham, near Woodfield Mall. The camera system quickly recorded 10,000 violations, each resulting in a $100 ticket. But 98 percent of the violations were by motorists who didn’t stop before turning right on a red light, according to Schaumburg Police Chief Brian Howerton.

. . .

Meanwhile, Schaumburg police studied the 10 intersections with the most accidents and found that only about 15 out of 800 collisions were caused by traffic signal violations. The majority were caused by failure to reduce speed, Howerton said.

rshah Chicago, Red Light Cameras

[From Red-light camera should capture right car with right plate :: Naperville Sun via Instapundit and Gapers Block ]

Consider the plight of this senior citizen who received a red light camera ticket for a car that wasn’t hers.

After many phone calls, insisting this was not her vehicle, nor was she anywhere near the location indicated, she was instructed to protest the ticket at the Daley Center.A protest filing fee was paid. Three appearances were required in traffic court. Each one became more frustrating than the one before. It seemed the protester was not innocent before being proved guilty but quite the contrary. It became obvious that no representative of the court believed the story.The third appearance finally got the court’s attention because the license plate was produced as evidence, and although it did match the numbers on the plate, it was not identical to the plate on the photo.After all the dust had cleared and the expenses were paid by this tenacious senior citizen, including time, parking fees, tolls as well as anguish and distress, the case was dismissed.It was dismissed simply because, after investigation by this lady, it was discovered that two vehicles registered in the state of Illinois can have the same identical plate number. The only difference is that one is a vanity plate.

This story is a marked contrast to the piece on RedFlex in the Tribune a few weeks ago. It described the process for ticketing cars:

Once through the lobby, visitors come upon a half-dozen or so violation reviewers, who watch every single 12-second video clip and still image that comes to RedSpeed showing a possible violation. Because drivers regularly trigger the cameras without a violation occurring—often by stopping just past the stop line or stopping abruptly after speeding—it’s up to the reviewers to determine whether they think there’s a violation.If they think not, the file gets purged; but if they believe a citation should be issued, the reviewers send the information to a senior reviewer. If that person agrees, the file gets forwarded to the respective law-enforcement agency, which decides whether to issue a citation.

This story points out a disconnect between the process of identifying a license plate and confirming that it matches the vehicle description associated with the license plate. Part of this is a technical problem. It was reported last year that the tollway Ipass cameras couldn’t detect vanity plates properly. Apparently, this is also a problem for red light cameras. The second is a bureaucratic issue. It is well known there is a problem with vanity plates. 25% of the plates in Illinois are non-standard. Why aren’t there measures in place to prevent this from occurring? Here is a graphic from the Daily Herald on vanity plates.

rshah Chicago, Red Light Cameras

[From 10 facts about red-light cameras -- chicagotribune.com]

Here is a summary of how the red light cameras operate in Chicago. This material was compiled from a number of sources. The vendors for Chicago’s cameras are RedSpeed Illinois and Redflex Traffic Systems.

The system operates by using “magnetic sensors installed at various points leading up to the stop line to determine whether the camera should begin taking pictures and video. (Video clips are about 12 seconds.) There are no sensors past the stop line, meaning if you’re in the middle of the intersection—waiting to turn left—and the light turns red, the camera should not record the incident. The average intersection has two cameras, although the number ranges from one to four.” (from Tribune).

This technology is also known as loop detectors. Once triggered the cameras take 3 images and 12 seconds of video of each violation. A violation occurs when a vehicle enters an intersection 1/10 of a second after the light has changed to red. The only two legitimate reasons for disobeying a red light are participating in a funeral precession or yielding to an emergency vehicle.

Loop detection technology was chosen, even though its more expensive, because the city felt video detection is not yet mature and has a high failure rate. The cameras are are fixed so they cannot be remotely maneuvered.

A bit more detail can be found at the web site for RedSpeed Illinois. Their explanation is:

The state of traffic signals is continuously monitored and their ‘on’ time recorded by the system. When the red aspect is detected, a timer is started. When this timer exceeds the programmed ‘time into red’, the two road loops are monitored for detection of a moving vehicle. If a vehicle is detected, the program proceeds to violation capture, then two wide-angle images and one zoom image of the vehicle are recorded.

However, the next generation system is known as RedSpeed. Here is what it can do:

The system detects speed violations during the green and amber phases, and also detects red light violations. Three images and a 12 second video clip are captured. The first is a zoom shot showing the vehicle number plate. The second is a wide angle image including the make, model, and colour of car and the offence data. The system then delays, for a period related to the vehicle’s speed, and captures a third frame, also a wide angle image showing the time delay between frames. The two wide-angle images can be used as evidence to show that the vehicle was moving at the time of the recording. (My emphasis)

I would not be surprised to see the RedSpeed cameras deployed next. We will hear how speeding through intersections causes many accidents and how it is necessary to use cameras to deter this behavior. This new technology can save lives and raise money for cities. (They can also be used to gather lots of data on us, see here and here.)

rshah Chicago, Red Light Cameras

[From Traffic cameras could help wipe out city's projected deficit :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: City Hall]

Insurenet proposes that Chicago could make “well in excess of $100 million. We think at least $200 million.” All they would have to do is use traffic cameras to collect license plate numbers and then match the numbers with those of uninsured motorists. A traffic camera would then read a license plate, if it was uninsured, it would then send a ticket in the mail. To accomplish this, Chicago would also need to compel insurance companies to report the names and license plates of insured motorists into the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (NLETS), the information-sharing network that links federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

Does anybody see any problems in this scheme? The readers of the Sun-Times offered quite a few.

1. The numbers don’t seem to add up. Frankly, I couldn’t understand the figures from the newspaper article. But basically, the city would need on the order of 700,000 tickets per year to generate this revenue. Thats a lot of tickets.

2. The levied fines seem disproportional. Fining someone that doesn’t have insurance on the car a $1000? What are the odds that they could either afford to pay or be willing to pay the fine?

This brings me to something called unintended consequences.

People without insurance (they know who they are) will now have a bullseye on their car (aka the license plate). They will have a $1000 incentive to make sure they do not receive a fine. They may try to disguise their plate or avoid traffic cameras. Or they might be willing to go down the slippery slope of illegality by telling the city an incorrect address for their car registration or making sure the license plate on their car isn’t theirs. This is a slope the city doesn’t want people to venture. Once citizens muck with the connection between license plates and their registration, it throws the whole enforcement mechanism for many sorts of issues awry.

I think fines for uninsured motorists are a good use of traffic cameras. But lets use it as a tool to push people to buy insurance and not as a way to unfairly punish people, who will likely become even harder to catch.

rshah ANPR, Red Light Cameras

rshah Chicago, Red Light Cameras

[From theexpiredmeter.com » Red Light Cameras Help With Amber Alerts In Oak Forest]

When red light cameras arrived, many of us recognized it was only a matter of time before they would be used for other purposes. Recently, Gatso USA tested red light cameras that can read license plates in Oak Forest. It uses an 11 megapixel to capture enough detail for license plate recognition. The technology is ostensibly for identifying cars during an Amber Alert. Here is a clip from their press release.

Gatso USA, a leading photo enforcement systems provider, announced today that after one year of development, testing and customer evaluation, its flagship GS11 red light and speed camera now carries an AMBER Alert feature that can help ensure the safety of abducted children by decreasing law enforcement’s response time in locating suspected criminals. . . . The camera’s AMBER Alert feature enables police departments to search in real time for wanted or suspect vehicles at intersections or locations within a city’s network of compatible red light or speed photo enforcement cameras. When a suspect vehicle passes a camera location, the camera immediately reports the information back to the police department.

In a recent evaluation of Gatso USA’s GS11 AMBER Alert capability conducted in a south suburb of Chicago, Deputy Chief David DeMarco of the Oak Forest Police Department, the chief coordinator of the evaluation, stated, “I was amazed. Within 20 seconds of passing a camera location, we were notified in the field with a message and a photo that my car was detected at the camera location when the AMBER Alert feature was activated. It’s a priceless tool for law enforcement when looking for a suspect vehicle involved in an abduction or serious crime. We consider the evaluation to be highly successful.”

The evaluation was coordinated after the city of Oak Forest installed several of Gatso’s GS11 red light photo enforcement solutions for designated intersections within the city. The city of Oak Forest conducted an extensive evaluation of five red light camera photo enforcement solutions and selected Gatso based on product performance as well as the beneficial cost structure provided, which does not require any capital expenditure from the City or the police department.

rshah ANPR, Chicago, Red Light Cameras

[From theNewspaper.com Photo Ticket Cameras to Track Drivers Nationwide]

The vendors of red light cameras and speed cameras are planning to add more features that expand the ability to track motorists. Redflex is planning to add OCR to their cameras in the next few months, which is also known as automatic license plate recognition technology. This could allow them to keep tabs on every car that passes through a particular intersection. “Imagine if you had 1500 or 2000 cameras out there that could look out for the partial plate or full plate number across the 21 states where we do business today,” Elsadek said. “This is the next step for our technology.”

The article also points out that these technologies can be abused. A recent example the article mentions:

In the past, police databases have been used to intimidate innocent motorists. An Edmonton, Canada police sergeant, for example, found himself outraged after he read columnist Kerry Diotte criticize his city’s photo radar operation in the Edmonton Sun newspaper. The sergeant looked up Diotte’s personal information, and, without the assistance of electronic scanners, ordered his subordinates to “be on the lookout” for Diotte’s BMW. Eventually a team of officers followed Diotte to a local bar where they hoped to trap the journalist and accuse him of driving under the influence of alcohol. Diotte took a cab home and the officers’ plan was exposed after tapes of radio traffic were leaked to the press. Police later cleared themselves of any serious wrong-doing following an extensive investigation.

rshah ANPR, Applications, Red Light Cameras, Traffic Congestion

[From Devices help drivers spot 'cops in a box' -- chicagotribune.com]

The City of Chicago reports crashes have been reduced by 20 percent in the two years since the camera technology was installed in early 2006 at 10 intersections. . . . Crashes decreased 30 percent, from 1,055 in 2004 to 736 last year, at intersections where red-light cameras were installed in 2004 and 2006, according to the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications. . . . “Crashes at intersections citywide are down 4.6 percent since 2004. More people are beginning to assume there is photo enforcement at every intersection and that a red light means stop,” he said.

Two other blogs have been following the developments around red light cameras in Chicago.

The Expired Meter focuses on issues around parking and traffic for Chicago. Over at Uncensored Thoughts, they have found 2 more red light cameras not listed by the city.

rshah Chicago, Red Light Cameras

[From City expects $50M. in red-light fines :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State]

An update on red light cameras in Chicago. There are 104 cameras in action with 25 more planned for this year. The city will collect more than $50 million in fines this year. (The sum of the previous four years was $35 million). The cameras are having an effect according to the OEMC.

Second, accidents are down 30 percent in the camera-covered intersections, and red-light running is down 60 percent, according to numbers provided by the city. And since the cameras also stand watch against illegal right turns on red, pedestrian injuries from such turns have also declined, according to Martinez.

The data provided seems to be the same numbers as provided back in March. See here for that update on red light cameras in chicago.

rshah Chicago, Red Light Cameras

[From Views From Both Sides On The Use Of Red Light Cameras] via the Beat The Traffic Blog

Supporters of red light cameras say…

• According to the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS), drivers who run red lights account for 22% of all traffic accidents in the United States.
• An IIHS study in Oxnard, California showed that red light running violations dropped 42% after red light cameras was introduced. A similar study in Fairfax, Virginia showed violations declined 40% after one year after.
• Publicity of red light cameras deters violations.
• Red light cameras don’t have biases and therefore drivers cannot be unfairly profiled.
• Privacy issues are null because of the public setting. Also, only people violating the law are photographed.
• They make lots of money for cities in need of the revenue.

Those who oppose the use of red light cameras say . . .

• The owner might not have been driving the car, yet they are mailed owner the ticket.
• Cameras increase other types of accidents, such as rear ending collisions, when people notice the camera and make hasty decisions to avoid ticketing. A Virginia Transportation Research Council study shows an increase of accidents with the installment of red light cameras.
• Longer yellow lights can make intersections much safer, in an easy and inexpensive way (check out the findings of the Texas Transportation Institute)
• There is no standardization of yellow light duration and several cities have been caught shortening them around a red light camera to increase revenue.
• Insurance companies (including IIHS) support red light cameras because more tickets mean they can raise insurance rates
• The accused receive notification weeks after the violation and there are no human witnesses to analyze the whole situation.
• They are expensive to operate and service the tickets in our court system.
• There are not stands to the fines through the U.S. which range from $50-$400.

Update, Chad Dornsife of Best Highway Safety Practices Institute offers his own analysis that red light cameras are not needed, see the top story at Highway Safety Group.

rshah Policy, Red Light Cameras