speed trap Heath

[flyinlow]

The city of Heath,Ohio has installed red light and speed cameras at cross streets on Rt 79 . Watch where you do burnouts. $100 a pop.

One local woman drove thru the intersection 8 times in a day. $800 in fines.

Local news article claims 8000 + tickets in the first month. My son got one in his Dodge truck. No proof of anything besides the picture of him driving thru the intersection with a green light. He is taking to the Army JAG to see if this is legal.

[kab69440]

Welcome to O-HEIL!-O. 

[Daytona R/T SE]

Just one more reason why I will NOT be attending the Mopar Nationals.

[Ghoste]

That's a real shame after Heath trying to promote themselves as a better stopover than Brice Road.  Oh well.

[Daytona R/T SE]

It's big business...

It's all about the $$$

I wonder how much the take is on 8000 tickets in one month 

[Mike DC]

   
I wish the public would start shooting/smashing the cameras.  If nobody at the site ever saw a thing then they couldn't prosecute.   

 

[Arthu®]

Eventually you will loose the battle, here in Europe we have had them for at least more than a decade now. In the beginning they were cut down, driven over or whatever especially in the rural areas. The only thing they do is put a new one up and at 40k a pop guess who's is going to pay for them...

The fact is is that it is all about the money, their claim that it will increase safety has never been proven. We even had them along the highways for a while but 99% was taken down because study actually showed that it only made the roads more dangerous because of people suddenly braking hard when they saw one of the camera's. The only ones that I do not have a problem with are the red light camera's, they actually serve a pretty good purpose as it actually creates a dangerous situation.

Currently in Europe the section controls are hot, so you can probably expect those too in a couple of years. What they do is they take a picture of you entering a zone and one when you leave. Time + Distance and voila average speed. A ton of tunnels in Austria already have these systems as well as some parts of the highway in the Netherlands.

At the moment I am having the most relaxing driving holiday there can be, I'm driving through Eastern Europe, the Ukraine and Russia and because the police are embarrassed of their English or don't speak it at all they won't even stop me if they catch me going to fast, they just wave politely. Also any tickets from speed camera's will never make it back home, so I must say that driving has never been this relaxing. Except from the part that the roads are literally death traps and the other people drive like maniacs...

Arthur

[68coronetGLwannabe]

We have those cameras all over the Phoenix metro area. Definitely generate some revenue. I guess the days of Due Process and getting you day in court to face your accuser are over, they just send you a ticket by regular mail and want you to pay up. Many people just toss them in the trash and wait to see if they get legally served by a server. As far as red light cameras why dont they just have the red light (in all directions) stay red a few seconds longer before turning green. Sounds simple but I guess they cant make money by doing that. Big brother is every where these days! 

[2Gunz]

Just dont get one in LA.  $450

Safer?  Ya right.

Im on my second red light ticket if anything Im going to drive faster to ensure I dont get busted on a red.

[Chatt69chgr]

We now have them in Chattanooga.  Here, it's all about $$.  They can't get you to vote to raise the taxes so they steal the money with the cameras.  The only way to get rid of them is to vote everyone out of office that installed them and vote in folks who campaign on a plank to remove them.  I agree that destroying them is a waste of time not to mention a criminal act.  We do have some intersections that are dangerous and where people run the light.  I suggest that we could leave the cameras at those places and keep tabs on who runs these.  A warning ticket to first offenders and driving school to repeat offenders.  Interestingly, the nearby town of Dalton, GA actually removed theirs when a study found that they had no significant effect on accidents there. 

[Mike DC]

  
Maybe it's time we re-define ourselves.  

The "America" that I always hear about in country songs & political science courses & gun-lobby advertisements would have started smashing those things the day they went up.    


   

[Charger_Fan]

 
Maybe it's time we re-define ourselves.  

The "America" that I always hear about in country songs & political science courses & gun-lobby advertisements would have started smashing those things the day they went up.        

Yep...only problem is that these days, there's way too many of "We the Sheeple".

You could always take up riding bikes & practice this maneuver.

[mauve66]

they also make photo blocker to spray on the plate, its clear and looks like a regular plate until the flash of the camera causes it to glare

[suntech]

Driving on red here in Norway, is app 500 usd, if i remember right, plus 2 points on you license. 8 points, and they take your license
Speed traps/ cameras are all over the place here.... my last ticket was app 750 usd, doing 56 in a 44 zone ( doing 91 km/h in a 70 km/h zone)  
Got ofcause another 2 points on the license!!!

Compared to Europe, you guys has are getting off easy!!!

When they first started with the camera speed traps here, they were taken out of buisness with dynamite, shotguns, trucks, chainsaw, you name it!!!
Next thing that happens is that they put up a new one, on taxpayers money

[Arthu®]

While on the subject of motorbikes you can also do it like in the attached photo. He was caught sliding by with 137km/h which was 17km/h too fast. He fought the ticket on the grounds that A he wasn't driving the motorbike at the time of the picture and B the bike wasn't actually riding. I never heard the outcome, doubt he won it though...

Arthur

[chargergirl]

Milton, FL is a nationally known speed trap. AAA will even tell you that. When they say 25mph through downtown they mean that...lol...I warn everyone that comes to visit...follow the speed limit!

[Shakey]

It just seems so unfair that people are not allowed to run red lights and speed.   

[Mike DC]

And if you have nothing to hide, then I guess you shouldn't mind letting the authorities search your home.

 

[kab69440]

Shakey, it's not just blatant red-lighters they are looking for. Here in town, the yellow-to-red times are purposely manipulated to maximize revenue. While I may not be able to definitively prove it in a court of law, I can see it happening. In my current (albeit, temporary) occupation of assisting elderly and disabled persons with handyman-style chores. I spend A LOT of time going from one end of town to the other and on average make four stops  per day at whatever hardware/lumber store is most readily available. One week, the light stays yellow at a given intersection for 3-4 seconds, next day, the same light is lit for barely two. It is not about safety, it is a money grab and a perfect example of why law enforcement should not be permitted to generate revenue. If the state cared half-as-much for my safety as they claim, there would be a "Three-strikes" type of deal for moving violations, with no monetary fines involved. Another big revenue-enhancement system is the DUI stop. When I worked at the fertilizer plant, I got off at 2:00AM, and averaged two stops per week for the crime of being on the road after the bars closed. If they have no legitimate cause to pull you over, they will make one up. On more than one occasion, I have been pulled over for a non-functional license plate light, and on no occasion was it out when I got out to inspect it.

[Mike DC]

Agreed. 

Police departments should not be allowed to generate revenue.   

[Silver R/T]

Its not only town...we have them all over town here.

[Khyron]

LOL< this thread wont end well, in before the move and the eventual lock

[70rt]

Guy in North Ga. got busted the other day running from the cops on his crotch rocket, was all over the news, at one point they clocked him at 170mph. I'm sorry, but that is funny.

I can't believe he got caught, will the cameras work at 170?

[GeneralLeeTESH]

Talk to the JAG. Get REAL Help !  Remember- "One Shot-ONE KILL  !!!"  

[NHCharger]

Looks like a bunch of law breakers in this here town.


camera fines
4 weeks, 10,000 traffic tickets
Heath officials say they didn't expect such a windfall
Saturday,  August 1, 2009 3:01 AM
By Josh Jarman
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
HEATH, Ohio -- City officials say they were shocked by the number of violations recorded during the first month of traffic-camera enforcement and decided to make it cheaper to protest multiple tickets.

More than 10,000 violations had been recorded by Heath traffic cameras through Tuesday. At $100 apiece, that would net the city a little more than $830,000 after paying the vendor, Redflex, its share.

In four weeks, the cameras will have generated an amount equivalent to roughly 12 percent of the Licking County community's annual budget -- and a lot of anger.

Mayor Richard Waugh said the city's intention was not to saddle drivers with four, six or sometimes eight or more tickets. Citations were not mailed for almost three weeks, however, to give City Council members a chance to modify the program in response to the high number of violations.

That meant some drivers racked up several over a period of days without realizing it until a bundle of tickets arrived in the mail.

Waugh said he sympathizes with drivers facing multiple fines. "If someone was pulled over by police and given a ticket once, that would be enough to modify driving behavior."

Before yesterday, drivers who sought to have their tickets dismissed would have had to post a full $100 bond for each one. Now, they will have to post $100 on only the first ticket to fight all of them, Waugh said. The hearing officer has been instructed to be lenient in cases of similar violations, he said, adding that he hopes that could lead to dismissal of up to half the tickets sent in July.

Waugh said that would cut the city's take, but the cameras were never about money. He said no specific purpose has been identified for the fines, which will go into the city's roughly $7 million general fund.

The cameras have generated fewer tickets each week, and Waugh said the city had expected the number to level off at about 400 a month. He said the city anticipated generating an additional $100,000 from fines this year.

But opponents still call the cameras a cash-grab by the city, questioning their effectiveness as safety devices. Ten cameras watch over six intersections, looking for speeders, red-light runners and other violators. Signs at the intersections warn that the cameras are in use.

According to statistics compiled by the Ohio Department of Transportation, 16 of the 408 traffic crashes reported on Rt. 79 from Hopewell Drive to Irving Wick Drive between 2006 and 2008 were caused by someone running a red light. Six were attributed to cars traveling faster than the 35-mph speed limit. Following too closely was reported as the greatest contributing factor in most crashes, which overwhelmingly were rear-end collisions.

A similar report for Rt. 79 south of Irving Wick found that one of 38 crashes in the same period was caused by speeding. Two speed-enforcement cameras at Coffman Boulevard in that area accounted for more than half of all the tickets issued last month.

Heath Police Chief Tony Shepherd said ODOT's crash data does not tell the whole story. In most noninjury crashes, police do not have the time or manpower to conduct crash-reconstruction analysis, he said. The speeds listed on those crash reports are the speeds reported by the drivers.

Shepherd said officers typically write about 100 traffic tickets a month, mainly because his department is too short-staffed to devote significant time to enforcement.

Shepherd and Waugh disagree with those who say the speed limit at Coffman is artificially low. The four-lane road there travels through a less-congested area of some businesses and homes before opening up to fairly rural countryside south of the city.

Every day in summer, more than 1,500 children travel to the city water park, about a block north of the Coffman intersection near City Hall, Waugh said.

He said raising the speed limit along that stretch would put residents in danger, considering how many drivers already exceed it.

"The speed limit has been 35 there for 40 years," Waugh said, "and there are three signs telling you that before you get to Coffman."

[Troy]

So, being a "computer guy"... what's to stop the programmers from snapping the picture a couple of milliseconds prior to the red light? I mean, the company selling the cameras to the local governments are guaranteeing a certain amount of revenue. Seems like a conflict of interest to me. It doesn't take much to play with the timing of the lights to catch drivers off guard and the driver has no proof of their own to refute the ticket. I was reading a study the other day that noted most of the "t-bone" accidents (that the cameras are supposed to prevent) involve emergency vehicles. Those statistics don't change much with the cameras but, rear end collisions increase due to people anticipating the light. I predict we'll see a lot more of these revenue generating schemes as state and local governments struggle with budgets. That's all they are as I don't believe there's any safety advantage at all.

Troy

[Mike DC]

I'd like to see pork-bill cameras installed into the house of congress.  Fine them $10,000 every time the camera snaps a shot of them voting for unnecessary pork. 


 

[chargergirl]

I'd like to see pork-bill cameras installed into the house of congress.  Fine them $10,000 every time the camera snaps a shot of them voting for unnecessary pork. 


 

It would never pass since congress would have to vote on it.