Problems With Red Light Cameras

¶ … Red Light Cameras "I always feel like somebody's watching me." This isn't just the lyric to a popular 80s song -- it is the reality in New York City at many stoplights. In most cities, suburbs, and towns, if a driver makes a moving violation and no one sees what the driver is doing, the driver has effectively gotten away with the crime.

As noted on the New York City official website, New York has instituted a red light camera system whereby drivers that are photographed going through red lights will receive a Notice of Liability (NOL) ("Red light cameras"). The city's defense of this policy is simple: in a city as heavily populated as NYC, it is difficult to find enough police officers to be free to police red lights. Unfortunately, unlike human beings, the red lights cannot exercise good judgement about what is safe driving and what is unsafe driving.

All of us have been driving through a yellow light that turned red just as we were passing through it. Sometimes it is safer to speed up and slow down if someone is tailgating you, for example. But the red light ticket system leaves no leeway for drivers' common sense. If someone passes through the light while it is red at any time, the driver gets a ticket. New York has traffic that results in even good drivers driving very close to one another.

For example, just recently, a driver of a seafood truck was rear-ended: the driver said he was forced to make a difficult decision between continuing to move forward and incurring a $50 fine when confronted with a yellow light or slamming on his brakes. He chose to do the later and the result was an accident (Cole). Similar programs in New Jersey and Nassau County have already been discontinued because of a higher rate of accidents.

In an appearance on PIX 11 news Juan Martinez, New York City's Department of Transportation's Director of Strategic Initiatives stated: "What you see happening is that when people expect the law to be enforced, they stop blowing through red lights. It really is very straightforward. Every yellow light is timed to the same whether camera there or not: 3 seconds if it's 30 mph." But critics counter that is precisely the problem with the program -- the timing of the yellow lights is simply too short for certain city areas.

Even more vociferous critics of the policy, as noted in the New York Post, have alleged that the city is primarily doing this as a method of raising revenue versus improving safety. The red light cameras have actually been stationed in secret in 150 locations and while word-of-mouth has spread quickly about where they are located, the program's critics note that if they wanted to encourage safer driving, the cameras would be prominently displayed to ensure that more people would come to a stop at lights (Furfaro).

The New York Times notes that many drivers are using apps like Waze to find the cameras (Quain). Of course, the fact that some drivers can scan for the cameras also defeats the purpose of the city, given that the same drivers can drive just as fast if they know no cameras are watching them.

Thus, New York City's red light camera program is inconsistently applied as drivers may or may not be caught, largely depending on their familiarity with the city and what apps they use, versus the quality of their driving (Blau). Although supporters claim that the program has led to a decrease in collisions, a 2005 study by the Federal Highway Administration study of.