Red light camera conspiracy theorists on the job

Uber-extremist wave about to hit Charlestown

By Will Collette

Progressive Charlestown was included on the long list of recipients of the e-mail below from a group calling itself the National Motorists Association. They are a Wisconsin-based group with a non-profit arm that raised almost a quarter million dollars in the most recent tax year.

Based on their website, it appears they are dedicated to protecting drivers’ constitutional right to speed, run red-lights, drink and drive and otherwise endanger the rest of us. I guess they'd call that freedom.

Their single largest expense, $128,585 or more than 50% of their revenue, was spent on activities that are only labeled as “other” in their IRS-990 tax report. Much of their income - $197,838 – comes from advertising and from selling stuff. They run ads for lawyers who defend against driving charges and for radar detectors.

They originally formed to lobby against the national 55 mph speed limit. They have fought Mothers Against Drunk Driving over the years and have sought to discredit statistics showing the link between drunk driving and traffic deaths.

So naturally, they are go-to experts for local wing-nuts who are up in arms about Charlestown’s new red light cameras. 

Here is their letter.

Dear Charlestown Officials:

Charlestown residents and visitors will soon have their wallets pilfered by the money grab red light camera scam that will issue most tickets to safe drivers who endangered no one. Two versions of the scam make the money grab cameras profitable.

1) Yellow intervals on the lights are deliberately and maliciously set (or retained) as too short to allow proper stopping time and distance for at least 85% of the vehicles at their ACTUAL approach speeds. For example, yellow intervals that should be at least 4.7 seconds to accommodate the perception/reaction time and stopping time of 85% of the vehicles at their ACTUAL approach speeds of up to 45 mph will be set as short as 3.6 seconds. The up-to-1.1 seconds too short is the scam, a deliberate part of the business plans of the for-profit camera companies and their for-profit city business partners in the scam. It causes safe drivers to inadvertently and harmlessly violate the red by up to about 1 second. These drivers clear the intersections during the all-red phase and have zero risks for crashes.  Adding one second to the yellow intervals will almost always reduce the violation rates by 70% to 90+%, enough to make the cameras both unnecessary and unprofitable.  Note that both federal and most state rules on how to set yellows do NOT require properly long and correctly safe yellows that minimize crashes and violations.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Neither of the two red-lights covered by Charlestown’s new cameras belong to Charlestown. They are owned by RIDOT. They are not controlled by Charlestown nor Sensys, Charlestown’s contractor for the camera system. RIDOT has no financial stake in the number of tickets issued. In fact, RIDOT’s bureaucratic foot-dragging delayed the installation of these cameras for two years. - WC

2) Cameras ticket safe slow rolling right on red turns that federal research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows virtually never cause crashes. Right on red turns, with or without a full stop, are involved in only 0.06% of all crashes with an injury or fatality. At least 99.94% of rolling right on red tickets will be for MONEY, not safety.
http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Traffic+Techs/current/The+Safety+Impact+of+Right+Turn+on+Red:+Report+to+Congress

EDITOR’S NOTE: before any tickets are issued, a CPD officer must review the photos and the video – which will show a right-on-red turn as opposed to red-light running – before allowing a ticket to be issued.

Charlestown residents can pack every council meeting with objections, vote out every elected camera supporter, detour around every camera intersection on every trip, never turn right on red to jam up traffic, stop shopping at city stores and tell the managers you will return when the cameras are gone so store managers pressure the government to end stop the cameras, fight every ticket in court to take the profit out of the scam for the government, organize public protests every week at camera locations as is being done in Chicago, write opposing letters and Op-Eds for the local media, etc.

EDITOR’S NOTE: And let’s not forget Benghazi.

Charlestown residents need to ACT if you want the scam to go away. Stay quiet if you want to leave your wallets open to pilferage by the for-profit red light camera scam.

Respectfully submitted,

James C. Walker
Life Member, National Motorists Association
Board Member and Executive Director, National Motorists Association Foundation
www.motorists.org
2050 Camelot Road
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
734-668-7842