Liberty vs. the Red Light Camera

Yesterday I wrote about the hypocrisy in Chicago and its suburbs surrounding Red Light Cameras. Our aldermen and other elected officials continuously proclaim that we need these cameras to reign in an apparent pandemic of dangerous collisions. The reality of the situation is that it is nothing more than a fundraiser, and like all good little statists, they are pounding the fear monger's pulpit in order to reach into our wallets yet another way. The citizens of Chicago and the surrounding communities are justified to be outraged at the way they are being robbed on a daily basis, unless of course you are of Dennis Byrne's ilk.

Byrne writes for the Chicago Daily Observer, and has made berating those of us that would question our Red Light Overlords (not to mention our Parking Meter Pimps) something of a personal pleasure over the past year. Almost jovially, he has expounded that those of us complaining about tickets that are largely unfairly enforced (e.g. legal right turns on red) are simply whining scofflaws upset that Mother Daley has rapped her ruler down across our knuckles:

All the carping about the camera’s unfairness and unconstitutionality is nothing more, when it comes right down to it, than an excuse to break traffic laws without getting caught. No one is stupid enough to admit it, but the truth of it is self-evident. I just wish these law-breakers would do us all a favor and stop whining about entrapment, violations of privacy rights and all the other red herrings.

Driving is a licensed activity in a public place. Because it is a public place, any expectations of privacy are ill founded. Because the government regulates driving, expectations that the government shouldn’t use a camera to enforce its laws in a public place are ridiculous.

What a person like Byrne doesn't understand, or simply doesn't believe in, is the prospect of personal liberty. A great article by Jeffrey Tucker at Mises.org outlines the issue perfectly, albeit with stop signs as the symbol of the fight for individual liberty:

In some ways, then, it is true that the stop sign — as with every regulation by the state — embodies all that is wrong with the public sector. The rules are made to benefit the state. You are on the hot seat if any policeman says that you have done wrong. The pretense of a fair trial is a complete farce, as you have to tangle with judges who hate you, waste several days of work, and throw yourself on the mercy of the court. Once you are entangled in the web, you can't really get out.
And who makes the rules? The central planners make the rules, and the public be damned. The rules are there to serve the state, not us, and the stop sign that is oddly placed in order to extract revenue makes the point very well.

When you are stopped, you become aware that the imbalance between the citizens and the state couldn't be more obvious. Deliver an insult and you are arrested. Try to run and you are gunned down. Fail to pay and you end up in the slammer. And maybe the cop will find something else about your life to be suspicious of. Whatever they want to know, you must tell them.

Government is not reason; it is force. What was the actual social rationale for that stop sign in the first place? You dare not ask, for then you are questioning the elites who are in charge of your life. And why was it removed? It's not for you to question why; it is for you to do or die. It was there and now it is gone. All "law-abiding citizens" must change with the arbitrary dictate of the traffic masters.

Someone like Dennis Byrne, however, assumes that the safety of the public in general is more important than an argument of liberty versus traffic masters. He mockingly likens us to those people that complained about the institution of the Denver Boot as enforcement of unpaid parking tickets:

The red-light camera is raising the same kind of objections we once heard when cities first started to use the Denver Boot to immobilize the ars of drivers who habitually flouted parking regulations and refused to pay their fines. All that their complaining accomplished was to make them ustifiable objects of scorn and ridicule. Just like the red-light runners look today.

Lost in this statement is the fact that the City owns its property, and like any property owner, retains the right to lease out its space to those who might want to pay for it. This is the justification for something like a City Sticker on your car, particularly in a permit area. The city ensures that the people parking within its limits are indeed those who live within its limits. The permit areas ensure that people who live in certain high traffic neighborhoods have adequate recourse to park near their homes. To compare an issue of property to an issue of privacy is to compare apples to oranges.

I defer again to Jeffrey Tucker, with some minor edits for perspective:

Now, I'm not saying that we don't need rules in society. But the question of who makes the rules and on what basis becomes supremely mportant. Will the rule making flow from the matrix of voluntary exchange based on the ethic of serving others through private enterprise? Or will the rules be made and enforced by people wearing guns and bulletproof vests with a license to shock or kill based on minor annoyances?

Something as seemingly innocuous as a stop sign red light camera can become the occasion for the use of terrible violence and terrible oppression. And think about it: we are talking about local government that is especially sensitive to public opinion. If we see corruption here, what about at the national level, where the citizens are nothing but an abstraction?

So, no, I have no problem with making the stop sign red light camera a symbol of the fight. It shows that even the least objectionable aspects of the state can mask despotism and that we should think hard — very hard — before ever ceding control of even the smallest parts of life to the state.

Ultimately, the state is in control or we are.

There is nothing in between.

So I ask that the next time you roll up to one of the City of Chicago's 141 different intersections that is home to a red light camera, that you stop and think about these words.

Who is in control of your life, and are you happy about it?

If you're unhappy, what will you do to stand in between?

Red Light Special

The City of Chicago lists that it currently has installed 141 Red Light Cameras. Spurred by the revenue generated by these cameras, several different suburbs have been installing them as well. Both the City of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs have expounded that these cameras are installed for the purpose of safety. Those of us that have been burned by the City over the past few years would certainly beg to differ, as the ticketing policy absolutely reeks of a revenue generation scam. I support this with my own experiences of having been ticketed when being stuck out in the middle of an intersection for a left hand turn until the light goes red, a situation that any city driver will tell you is entirely unavoidable should you ever want to actually make that turn. I have additionally been ticketed for making right turns on red lights where there is no "No Turn on Red" sign visible anywhere. In all instances, the City's response to a protest claim is "Pay Up."

Over the past month or two, all of our gripes seem to be coming to the forefront as more and more instances of public sector thievery rear their ugly heads. It began in early June, as the Sun Times reported on Alderman Ed Burke's request that the City look into instituting an education program on top of the already $100 per-ticket fines:

If the City Council’s most powerful alderman has his way, they’ll also have to go back to school — at a cost of $25.

Finance Committee Chairman Edward M. Burke (14th) wants to require red-light runners to complete a “Red Light Education Program” to prevent them from becoming repeat offenders.

At today’s City Council meeting, Burke introduced an ordinance directing the city’s Department of Administrative Hearings to launch a “red light education program”—both on-line and in person—bankrolled by charging red-light runners a $25 fee in addition to the $100 ticket.

Motorists who fail to complete training would pay an additional $50 fine.

So that's $125, plus another $50 for those of us who view the ridiculous class as the giant waste of time that it truly would be. According to the same article, the cameras, at $100 a pop are generating abotu $50 million in revenue as it is. Up that by an additional 75%, and that becomes $87.5 million simply by creating an excuse to charge more money. But they're not stopping there. As the Big Brother network of cameras grows ever larger, a company by the name of InsureNet has pitched to the City that it could generate yet another $100 to $200 million by tapping into the network of both red light cameras and surveillance cameras already installed on our corners. How, you ask? Why, by using that video to check our plates and see who out there is driving without insurance, of course! Thankfully, at least for the time being, the State of Illinois hasn't got a law in place that forces insurance providers to make that information available. I doubt it will be long before they do, though, with 13 other states already doing it and $200 million at stake.

With dollar signs in their eyes, does anyone believe officials with the City or even the surrounding suburbs are really going to care about who a program like this actually hurts? I have been to court a few times for speeding tickets. I've seen the people that are there to address their speeding ticket plus the additional fine for not having insurance. There is a reason they don't have insurance, and that reason is that they can't afford it. Seeing a judge sentence someone who is obviously scraping by to make the rent and eat to a $1,000 fine, if it weren't so sad, would almost be comical. ARS Technica sums it up nicely:

It's not hard to connect the dots on this one. If unemployed workers are the most likely to cancel their insurance, and InsureNet's system targets the uninsured, than the city of Chicago would, in effect, be balancing the books on the shoulders of those least able to afford it. Indeed, the city could find itself confronting a virtual mob of angry citizens who are funding social services and unemployment benefits out of their own unemployment checks.

The Sun Times saw fit to ignore that aspect of the situation. They did ask Burke about the money though, and of course, when pressed about the fundraising aspect of it all, Burke was limp-wristedly adamant that, “The focus shouldn’t be on the fee as much as on the educational benefit this could create.”

One assumes that the educational benefit would, of course, be that of recognizing that we are not supposed to be running red lights. Apparently we must be taught that the red lights mean stop. Of course, this would all be brought into focus if only somebody would crunch the numbers on safety! That's the ticket!

Until this past Sunday, of course, when the Chicago Tribune did exactly that.

(I give a HUGE hat-tip here to the Parking Ticket Geek and his tremendous blog The Expired Meter for this story, since I rarely read either of this town's awful publications.)

And what do we find out from this rare piece of actual effective journalism? What we suspected all along: Red Light Cameras are for making money. Nothing more. There is no better example than the town of Bellwood, a town with eight red light cameras, including one located next to the expressway on-ramp that churns out between $65,000 and $70,000 every month.

In his municipal league talk, McCampbell said he and other Bellwood officials lobbied for the new law. He said the driving force was the deaths of four people in a July 2005 crash that involved red light running at Mannheim Road and Madison Street.Bellwood has eight traffic cameras, but none at that intersection.

The 25th and Harrison locale is unusual for a red-light camera because traffic only flows in three directions, not four, reducing the likelihood of side-impact crashes. The east side of the intersection is flanked by the back of Wilson Elementary School, and its presence is one of the reasons officials gave for placing the camera there.

But the entrance to Wilson is a block away and there's no crosswalk at the intersection. What's more, the school has been closed for a year.

In an interview, McCampbell said Bellwood uses fine revenue from traffic cameras to underwrite the costs of police video surveillance equipment that watches the town of 20,000. The biggest financial contributor is the 25th and Harrison camera.But that's not the only reason why Bellwood officials value that particular camera, McCampbell admitted. He said 90 percent of violators it catches don't live in Bellwood and are headed to he expressway.

"To be very crass, they are less likely to return and complain about it," he said.

$AFETY!