Keep their purpose narrow
Published 5:35 pm Friday, June 19, 2009
No matter how well traffic-safety cameras reduce accidents and the dangerous driving that causes them, they’ll have their detractors.
Some fear a slippery slope that will lead to police cameras around every corner, recording our every move. Or cameras to catch speeders on freeways, which already are at work in Arizona. Or even government-mandated GPS devices that will measure your vehicle’s speed at all times, issuing a ticket every time you lose focus for a moment and creep over the speed limit.
Others see the cameras as a blatant move to siphon more money from citizens’ wallets and into municipal coffers.
Whether such fears sound more like hysteria or common sense probably depends on your own feelings about government. Regardless, it’s in government’s self-interest to commit to making sure they aren’t realized here.
Wise steps would include:
n Not messing with state laws that forbid enforcement cameras anywhere but intersections, school zones and railroad crossings. Or with the one that prohibits traffic-safety cameras from taking pictures from the front of vehicles, so people inside the vehicle can’t be identified.
n Placing red-light and speed cameras only in areas where data show a compelling danger.
n Dedicating net proceeds from fines to a special fund for public safety enhancements, not to general government operations. That’s what Everett will do, under an ordinance approved last week. Lynnwood, which pioneered red-light cameras in Washington two years ago, has been putting its revenue into public safety programs. The mission of such cameras must always be to discourage dangerous behavior, not to produce a governmental golden goose. If they’re working, revenue should eventually begin to fall.
Other reasonable safeguards are in place in Lynnwood and Everett, the only Snohomish County cities to have approved the cameras so far. The cameras only record violations — speeding in a school zone or entering an intersection after the light has turned red. Recordings are reviewed by police before a ticket is mailed to the vehicle’s registered owner, who then can access a Web-based video showing the violation.
Because the driver isn’t identified, the ticket doesn’t appear on anyone’s driving record.
When a car zooms into an intersection against a red light, the results can be deadly. Speeding in a school zone when students are present is a recipe for tragedy. Cameras can provide effective enforcement where police can’t, and in these potentially deadly places, they’re justified.
As long as they stay limited to their current, narrow purposes.
