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http://pd.gophercentral.com/u/1438/c/186/a/25

July 16, 2010

Greetings...

At midnight last night, Arizona stopped using photo radar cameras
after a few years of arguments and legal litigations claiming they
were unconstitutional and unreliable...

While it was proven that they helped slow down speeders, people that
were ticketed claimed over and over that the tickets were falsely
sent to them in the mail and unlike a policeman that could appear in
court to represent the police to argue in favor of why the ticket was
given, a speed camera couldn't be cross examined...

The company that supplied the cameras made quite a bit of money in
the deal of course, and malfunctions were not unusual which gave
creedence to arguments against the cameras...

The stretch of highway that originally brought the cameras to Arizona
was known for excessive speeding and a high rate of accidents. The
number of both dropped after the cameras were put up, and the fear
is that those numbers will rise again...

Both sides of photo radar have their merits and I'm on the fence myself
having had to drive on that crazy highway many times and witnessing
some crazy drivers that seemed to be doing a time trial for Nascar...

I also noticed the drop in those crazies after the cameras went up,
but when a friend of mine got a photo ticket in the mail with an
image that was very blurred and questionable, I also wondered how many
people were getting ticketed and had to pay a pricey ticket because
it seemed that there was no fighting them in the beginning until the
public started to make noise and were finally heard, which resulted in
some testing, and ultimately, a vote that passed to ban them...

We also have red light cameras and in all honesty, while they may seem
like a great idea, there have been so many accidents at intersections
because people freak out when the light is changing and momentarily
argue with themselves whether to stop or slam on the breaks and have
the car behind them slam into them, which happens every day at hundreds
of intersections around the Valley...

Do any of you live in a place that has photo radar? What are your thoughts
on one more step to film us with the ever present argument... "to
protect us"?


Have a great weekend everyone and try to keep cool. It's hot all over
the country and although we don't have the humidity everyone else does,
it was 113-118 degrees yesterday depending on which part of Arizona you
live in with higher temps forecasted the next few days. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, it's a "dry heat"...