Velocity Cameras - Will They provide Enhanced Road Safety Although Gathering Traffic-Ticket Revenues?4698751

If profits gathering were the most crucial cause for picture-taking traffic-enforcement controls, the velocity cameras will produce more of it than the red-light-intersection cameras. Predictably, more drivers speed than run red lights. Speeding is much less dangerous. Such drivers velocity both on the highways and in the metropolitan regions where the posted pace limits might vary from road to road. Will these roads be safer under speed-camera surveillance?

Speed cameras are not new. Several types were developed in the 1950-60's. Currently, Europe, Canada, and Australia use them quite a bit. The newer digital computer-controlled models are rapidly becoming popular with enforcement systems because they allow for fast accurate money-saving processing. In fact, many red-light cameras can also gauge the velocity of a vehicle while it passes through a green light. Att Systems

How do they work?

Pace cameras generally work through two key principles: 1) by using Doppler radar focused on a specific driving region, and 2) by measuring the velocity of vehicle moving between two electronically marked points. Both of these computer-enhanced camera setups work well. Both systems can cover one to four lanes of visitors in one or both directions. Photographs of the speeding vehicles are the only ones taken.

The newest camera models use infra-red flash which is invisible to the human eye, and can be used effectively at night. Also, most of the installed systems are fixed; that is, they are located in a fixed position at a fixed roadway spot. Yet, in certain places, these cameras can be moved from one fixed location to another. Additionally, these camera systems will become more mobile as the advanced wireless technologies come into play. Tan Ann Jee

Two advantages of velocity cameras.

One big advantage of these systems is no patrolman is needed to catch violators. We have all seen the freak speedsters cutting back and forth dangerously across multiple lanes of targeted traffic to get ahead while no patrolman is around to catch them. However, a well-placed velocity camera will catch them. Slowing down these wild impetuous drivers will make our highways and throughways much safer.

Along this line, another advantage is these systems can be calibrated to allow a 10-mph-or-more grace-speed on the highways. And they will still catch a large number of speed violators. Proportional but generous velocity allowances could also be made on the roads in the counties, metropolitan areas, and smaller towns. Still, numerous violators will be caught and fined.

Two disadvantages.

One disadvantage of the currently installed systems is the drivers will figure out where they are located, and then will drive the speed limit in those spots only. Yet, is not that part of the leading idea to start with, to slow drivers down?

Another disadvantage could be the public response to these new systems. Most drivers like to think they use common sense on the roads, which in the U.S., is an American way. If our roads and vehicles can handle higher speeds, why not? That is part of the routine adjustment to technological advancement. This apparent attitude can be illustrated on many large interstate highways where the actual website traffic flow often is slightly faster than the posted velocity limit. As a result of this routine speeding, the wide-spread installment of these camera systems could cause be a major drive to increase the legal speed limits to what the modern roads and vehicles can handle in proportion to website traffic density.

During the late1980's, velocity cameras were installed in two Texas towns. The negative public response to these first monitoring attempts there was so great that they lasted only a few months. Of course, at that time the public was not accustomed to such advanced devices, and did not know what to think of them. They reacted fast and hard.

Today, however, most citizens are conditioned to modern electronics and computer-controlled technologies as a necessary way of life. Thus, we might be more receptive to such controls over our daily lives. Still, certain questions about the following issues will undoubtedly arise:1) legal overkill, 2) big-brother-tactical monitoring of our driving habits, 3) invasion of privacy, 4) freedom of choice, and 5) bureaucratic gathering of revenues. These issues will be challenged as these picture-taking traffic-control devices become a bigger part of our safer-driving lives.