In the grand scheme, I realize red-light cameras are not very important, but I was absolutely delighted to see that Houston voters approved a referendum to stop the city from using these devices. Red-light cameras should be called revenue cameras because local governments almost always use them to collect more money rather than to promote safety. Indeed, there’s good evidence that they cause accidents, in part because governments shorten yellow lights in hopes of raping more motorists.
The same is true of cameras to catch speeding. In my life, I’ve been nailed a couple of times by those devices, and in every case it involved an absurdly (and deliberately) low speed limit (including 45 on an interstate highway and 25 on a four-lane road in a non-residential area).
The fringe benefit of this Houston referendum, by the way, is that the city will be forced to spend less. The City Controller acts as if this is a terrible result, but one quick solution for the city’s budget problems would be to limit average pay for all government officials to the average of private sector pay in the region. Here are some excerpts from a story in the Houston Chronicle. Read and enjoy.
Houstonians rejected the city’s red light camera program in a hard-fought ballot contest, delivering an immediate $10 million hit to an already dire budget situation at City Hall. With all votes counted, 53.2 percent of voters demanded a decisive end to the use of the devices, which had been used to issue more than 800,000 tickets and collected $44 million in fines since 2006. …City Controller Ronald Green said the loss of the devices would amount to a $10 million shortfall in revenues, a sharp decrease that would greatly complicate efforts to close a shortfall that was already nearing $80 million. “We’re going to have to cut expenses,” he said. “We need to really start talking about the fact that furloughs and layoffs may really be a potential option. … It’s now time for drastic cuts.” Jim McGrath, a spokesman for Keep Houston Safe, said he did not anticipate that the political action committee — backed by the Arizona-based company that runs the city’s red-light camera program – would try to fight the election results in court.
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[…] Since I’m handing out plaudits, the people of Arizona also deserve applause, along with Houston’s voters. […]
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[…] not forget, though, that the voters of Houston also deserve some applause. Advertisement LD_AddCustomAttr("AdOpt", "0"); LD_AddCustomAttr("Origin", "other"); […]
Phil Owens Campaign Manager for the CARLC,
Thank you Dan for the recognition of our effort, and for appreciating why we did it.
Holding Government one invasive program at a time might be tough but its effective. And we’re not done yet.
We were outspent,the media was against us, the City Govt refused to release records that would prove our argument about the increase in accidents.
But we prevailed because “the people” still have some patriot left in them.
Thank God and the Constitution.
[…] Dan Mitchell draws our attention to a Houston ban on red light cameras. Not only does the city have to stop waging war on its own citizens but it’ll have to cut spending. “This is a victory for the people,” said Paul Kubosh, an attorney who defends red light runners and collected more than 20,000 signatures with his brothers to get the referendum on the ballot. “The voters said that they do not like cameras.” […]
[…] spending and budget analyst Dan Mitchell has his own blog, where he identified one especially emotionally satisfying intiative result (he found California voters disappointing in this regard). Houston voters approved a referendum to […]
Ha ha. The GOP picks up 60-plus House seats and Dan is happiest about traffic light cameras. Classic.
I sympathize with you, but suggesting that governments shorten yellow lights in hopes of “raping” more motorists might be exaggeration in poor taste. Perhaps you meant “trapping”?