IAATM
Fayetteville’s red-light camera program is screeching to a halt July 31.
City traffic engineer Rusty Thompson said Friday that Fayetteville has decided to drop its contract with the operator of the cameras because of a legal dispute over the disposition of the collected fines.
When the current contract runs out July 31, nine red-light cameras at six intersections around the city will be taken down, he said.
A tenth camera — at Bragg Boulevard and Sycamore Dairy Road — was knocked down in a fatal crash May 17. It won’t be replaced.
The remaining cameras are at Yadkin Road and Santa Fe Drive; Yadkin and Skibo roads; Ramsey Street and the Martin Luther King Jr. Freeway; and Ramsey Street, Law Road and Par Drive.
Charlotte and Greensboro already suspended their red-light camera programs after a ruling by the N.C. Court of Appeals last year. The court said the city of High Point had to give 90 percent of the fines collected from its red-light program to local school systems.
But the city said that wouldn’t begin to cover the costs of operating the cameras.
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Thompson said the number of crashes has dropped significantly at the intersections with the cameras. “It’s made the intersections safer,†he said.
Not that I’m sorry to see the cameras go.
2 Responses to “IAATM”
 Comment by sam May 28th, 2007 at 1:27 pm |
I’d love to see those things leave our city, but too many people are convinced they’re a good thing, that they will somehow solve the city’s problems if they can get people to stop slightly earlier at the Broadway/Summit Hill intersection. And then they put up more, and then they started discussing making the yellow light shorter. I’m tired of it. These intersections weren’t particularly dangerous, and I don’t see any fewer accidents, though I’ve seen plenty of near misses as someone stops quicker than they should because they know that even legally coasting through the yellow will set off the cameras. One of the more irritating aspects of the whole thing is that the strongest argument I’ve heard in favor of the cameras is “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you don’t have to worry.” How much power can the state give itself using that argument? |
 Comment by Traci May 29th, 2007 at 12:33 pm |
We have have the cameras here in Wilmington. It’s my understanding that they don’t really prevent the number of accidents per intersection. They just change them from the red light running deadly T-bone style to the less fatal getting rear ended by stopping as the yellow is just ending to avoid the red. I still see plenty of windshield & tailight glass at the problem intersections. Running red lights here is a major safety problem in this area. |