Red light cameras, city revenue, and con games

I'm very pleased to read that a Florida man managed to gather evidence proving that the red light camera that 'caught' his wife, resulting in her being issued a traffic violation ticket, was placed at an intersection with an illegally short caution light.

About 28,000 drivers have been caught on camera running a red light in less than a year. The excuses range from bad weather to not wanting to be rear-ended.

But Collier driver Mike Mogil claims the yellow lights are simply too short. And as it turns out, he's right.

Armed with a stopwatch, Mogil may be driving a hole in the credibility of Collier County's red light camera system.

"If the county, they are not going to follow their own rules, then why should we be required to follow the rules?" he asked.

When his wife received a ticket in the mail recently, the first thing she said was the yellow light was too short.

So Mike, who works with numbers all the time as a math tutor, put it to the test.

"I said, ‘If it's really short, then you got short-changed and you got a ticket illegally,'" said Mogil.

The speed limit on Collier Boulevard, where she was cited, is 45 mph. According to county guidelines, the yellow light should be 4.5 seconds.

Mogil said he tested it 15 times with an average of only 3.8 seconds.

"And I said, ‘We've got a problem,'" he said.

He challenged the ticket Monday and a special magistrate dropped it when the county conceded the yellow wasn't long enough.

"I think it was an oversight more than anything," said Gene Calvert of the Collier County Transportation Department.

The county has already fixed the Collier Boulevard light, and says it will check 200 other intersections to make sure they meet the standard.

. . .

... Mogil says he's already checked 65 intersections and found that only seven yellow lights are long enough.

"There's a much, much bigger issue here and it has to be addressed," he said.

There's more at the link.

Hmm . . . let's see, now: of 65 intersections checked, and only 7 meet the caution light standard. That means fully 89% of those lights are set at the wrong interval. When one gets that high a percentage, I can't help but believe this to be a deliberate policy on the part of the county to maximize their revenue from fraudulently-issued red light tickets.

Class-action lawsuit, anyone?

Peter