Tweets may have a not-so-good name these days, but Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent contribution to the genre deserves applause. Abbott says he’s about had it with red-light cameras.
“More and more I think it’s time to do away with red-light cameras in Texas,” declared the governor, linking to a study asserting there’s no evidence red-light cameras lead to safety improvements. Yeah? Tell us more.
The study Abbott had in mind, conducted by two economists at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, finds “no evidence” of public safety improvements due to any photo-snapping of red-light runners. In reality, one kind of accident – a car slamming into another from behind – statistically takes the place of “T-boning” into the side of a car perpendicular to the red-light runner.
“The underlying mechanism,” according to researchers Justin Gallagher and Paul J. Fisher, “is that drivers will knowingly trade off a higher accident risk from stopping in order to avoid the expected fine of running a red light ... The effect on total accidents is close to zero and statistically insignificant.”
What to do about it? Work on making intersections safer, suggests Gallagher, rather than rely on cameras – mere mechanical on-lookers – to do most of the heavy lifting: in league, that is, with the traffic courts.
Here’s where things get sticky. Red-light cameras are terrific revenue-raisers for local government: sort of like the small-town speed traps of pre-interstate highway days.
The Denton Record-Chronicle reports that Denton last year “raked in about $2.3 million from drivers whose alleged violations were caught by one of the cameras. After expenses, the city profited about $668,000.”
Not bad. And not especially productive of a heightened respect for law and legal authorities. A camera doesn’t of itself bespeak civic authority.
It just clicks and clicks and clicks, creating annoyance, fear, and sometimes active resentment of a thing unseen but known to exercise power. The camera makes red-light policing a spookier thing than it needs to be.
You know the blasted thing is there, because the warning signs say so. Yet you can’t see it.
Too, the operations of the system are odd. The specified fine is $75 – for those who choose to pay up. Those who don’t choose to pay suffer (if they read the fine print) no penalty save, possibly, future inability to register a car online.
This is because, to the surprise of many motorists, the fine is a civil rather than a criminal penalty. The police won’t come and get you if you blithely tear up the summons the postman delivers.
No-consequences law-breaking has its demoralizing effects on citizens who feel over-supervised to begin with.
A Plano lawyer has filed more than half a dozen law suits alleging the unconstitutionality of the camera system and its adjudication procedures. (He, by the way, refuses to pay his own red-light fines.) Killeen, Corpus Christi and Houston have rid themselves of their cameras either through council vote or citizen initiative.
These aren’t wonderful times to feel spied on by one’s own public officials. That may be the paramount sentiment behind the growing dislike of red-light cameras.
The Texas Senate voted in the last session to get rid of them. The House failed to act, but Gov. Abbott’s tweeted interest in having another go at the matter could make all the difference in 2019 (taking into account his even larger interest in winning reelection this November).
A statewide ban on red-light cameras would not seem to violate the exercise of local rights.
Rather, it would rationalize a policy question creating unnecessary resentments and anxieties all over the state. Unnecessary if, as alleged in the Case Western Reserve study, the questioned policy doesn’t work the way many at the outset thought it would.
It isn’t easy to call off a once-promising experiment. But it’s never too late.
William Murchison is a research fellow at the Irving-based Institute for Policy Innovation.