The Wall Street Journal weighs in on the morons who believe traffic cameras are an unlawful invasion of privacy (as they drive drunk down our publicly funded roads, endangering the public, making more work for our publicly funded law enforcement). Sadly, the article is actually quite sympathetic to their gripes.
If you don’t want a ticket, and you can’t get a payday loan to buy overpriced reflective spray from the a**holes at sprayyourplate.com, how about obeying the &%@# traffic laws for once in your life?
My only criticism of traffic cameras is that, like surveillance cams, they really aren’t effective as deterrents. Morons remain morons, whether there’s a camera on them or not.
Swallowing The Camel 
worserer: they mutate into revenue systems hiding behind road safety auspices.
No, they don’t mutate; that’s just a direct benefit. Kinda like a stupidity tax. If people actually obeyed the law (hahahaha), the cams would disappear.
So many people are terrible drivers, and they’re much more dangerous than they realize. I just don’t know of any way to make people obey traffic laws, short of requiring a driving test every year. At least the cameras bring in some money so that they bad drivers can pay something back to the people whose lives they are risking every day.
Sorry, but a cursory investigation would reveal that, far from being a conspiracy of idiots, the camera are actually installed as revenue generators, including such wonderous things as shortened yellow lights to induce more violations.If you stop for less than the prescribed amount of time (such time nowhere to be found in the vehicle code) you get, not one, but several tickets until such time as the local jurisdiction gets around to notifying you that a stop isn’t really a stop unless you wait…No, I have never had a red light ticket, froma camera or a human being. 2 years as a LEO, though.
Hmm, now that’s something I haven’t heard anyone complaining about. They just don’t like the cameras, period. But if true, this is one legit reason to protest traffic cams. I’ll look into that and perhaps add an update, thanks.
Even more to the point, is that if the cameras were catching predominately red light runners (i.e. late entry to the intersection) as opposed to people turning red on right, I’d be all for them in any case. But it’s seems to be about 75% rollers vs 25% runners.And, As far as I know, you can’t make people do what they don’t want to do. All you can do is make it expensive, in one way or another.Look at england for the probable outcome of red-light cameras: speed cameras EVERYWHERE, and making it illegal to talk about them. Not my idea of a free country.
SME: Yes, the cameras have often been tweaked to maximize revenue rather than to minimize accidents (the alleged reason for cameras at traffic lights).They are also unreliable, generating numerous false positives (which is a feature, not a bug, for the operator – more revenue).—— A driver’s complaint about an improperly timed traffic light got the attention of a Chattanooga judge who said city officials are sending refunds to 176 motorists who were photographed by an automated camera and got tickets. Municipal Court Judge Russell Bean dismissed the traffic cases after officials checked out the complaint that a traffic light at a busy intersection was not timed correctly. A man who received a ticket for running the light raised the issue in court. “I’m going to dismiss them, and the city is going to refund their money back,” the judge told the Chattanooga Times Free Press. City traffic engineer John Van Winkle said his office investigated the March 3 complaint and the next day corrected the computer program’s timing glitch. He said the yellow light for drivers turning left onto Pine Street from east M.L King was too brief, 3 seconds instead of almost 4 seconds.—–and—–Last year, CBS News reported on an especially egregious case in Maryland: A traffic-camera intersection had a 2.7-second yellow light, while nearby intersections had 4-second times. Shorter yellow lights are more dangerous–but shorter yellow lights plus traffic cameras generate revenue.seconds.—–http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/upgrade/2420766.htmlThey are also unreliable, generating numerous false positives (which is a feature, not a bug, for the operator – more revenue).