AZ's notorious freeway speed cameras finally come down
 

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/07/20/a...last-speeders/



In span of about two-and-a-half years, Arizona's highway speed camera program, run by Australian company Redflex, mailed 1,105,935 tickets, or close to 1,125 tickets every day. In 2009, a group called CameraFraud went to work to get the cameras taken down, and after a year of effort they've been successful: Redflex shut the 78 fixed and mobile cameras down at midnight, July 16.

The group convinced Arizona's new governer, Jan Brewer, that the cameras were all about money. Brewer's predecessor, Janet Napolitano, had cited the fact that the cameras would bring in $120 million every year for the state. But since tickets needed to be delivered by process servers to those caught speeding in order to be legally binding, 66% of the violations were never paid. Instead of reaping $120 million annually, only $78 million was collected over the entire 2.5 years.

There remain some Arizona municipalities with speed-detecting cameras still in use, and CameraFraud is now taking aim at them. Also, the shutdown doesn't affect the red light cameras, a program run by American Traffic Solutions, which are still in operation.

how about pointing those cameras at the border instead. :p

I would agree.

I am just really happy to see these annoying cameras come down. In the end they should have known they were not going to work very well. They give you 2 large yellow warning signs before the camera, and even if you still get the ticket they cant prove that you received it in the mail unless it was hand delivered so no drivers were even paying the fines. What I would do is slow for the camera then floor it as soon as I passed. I would do this principle

Revenue-collection or not, the fact is that well over one million drivers in your state simply screwed themselves by not slowing down. No one forced them to drive fast enough to trigger the cameras (don't know about AZ, but here in the MD suburbs, the cameras give you a 10-mph margin before they are triggered, to allow for speedometer error and other factors). So there is generally little excuse for it.

how do you give the vehicle a ticket is my question...isnt the driver supposed to be cited?

get rid of all these stupid cameras and let the traffic officers do their paid duties to cite the driver, not the vehicle.

No. The cameras, in general, especially with tinted glass, cannot zero in on the driver's face......or tell if it is the registered owner or not. Nor are they intended to. They are designed to zero in on the license plate, and the ticket is mailed to the car's registered owner (by law, of course, registered owners must notify DMV of address-changes). This is now all kept on nationwide traffic-computers, so you can't escape ticket-records simply by living in (or moving to) another state.

There are some car-magazine ads touting Photo-Blocker-sprays (usually by mail-order) that are invisible and are supposed to block the camera's ability to see the license-plate numbers (it makes the whole license-plate reflect in one big white shiny light-blob), but I can't attest to their effectiveness, if any.

If your car gets zapped and you get a ticket, depending on the local jurisdiction, you can go to court, file an affidavit, and swear you weren't driving if someone else was driving your car at the time. But, of course, to lie about it is perjury, and the state is going to expect to have the fine paid one way or another...if not by you, then by who was driving....and then it's your word against his or hers. They will then go after the person at the wheel....although if the car was stolen, of course, it will have to be listed as such.

I just saw a story on the news where a Phoenix man pulled up next to a photo radar van and shot the attendant inside because he was pissed about the cameras. He still claims that he didnt know that there was anyone in the car

Can these anti-camera people come and fight our various traffic cameras around Vancouver?

Maybe, but don't count on it. Canada, for the most part, is a substantially different culture than the American West.

That makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? He trades a simple speeding fine (with no driver-points at that) for felony assault with a deadly weapon, and possible attempted murder. :egads:

yeah, he is a 68 yr old ... and just got sentenced to 22 yrs.

Anyway, thank God these asinine cameras have come down. Again, these are the FREEWAY cameras, which have nothing to do with catching or stopping dangerous drivers - only a live cop can do that - and everything to do with getting more money out of the honest person's pocket. Illegals with no registration or insurance? They could get flashed all day, but where do you send the ticket? What a joke.

Red light cameras are still up, and that's fine by me.

i'm so glad we have the law on this side for us in FL....

link: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/30/3059.asp

Sounds like there's a conflict there in FL as to just what is and is not legal. That's something that, of course, we can't settle here on CL.

sorry, i should of given the judges decision...

Those cameras scared the crap out of me when I visited Phoenix earlier this year...