THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: Saturday, December 16, 1995 TAG: 9512160010 SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL TYPE: Opinion SOURCE: George Hebert LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Photos of traffic violations are being taken more and more often, it seems. High tech marches on.
An enabling law was adopted early this year by the Virginia General Assembly, and camera systems for catching red-light runners have begun operating in Northern Virginia. The idea has found some advocates in our area, too.
In the plan used by Fairfax County and some of its neighbors, according to a recent news report, tickets and copies of the photographs are mailed to owners of the cars involved. The punishment is a $50 civil fine, and the offense is not considered a moving violation that goes on a driver's record; an owner can avoid the fine with a sworn statement that he or she was not behind the wheel.
On the wider scene, New York City also has a photo-enforcement system for intersections. And in San Francisco, the idea is being studied. The Canadian provinces of Alberta and Ontario deal with speeders this way.
The resort to a sort of automated traffic cop comes about as a result of the deadly frequency of intersection accidents and the hoped-for (almost guaranteed, in fact) deterrent effect of a watchful lens.
In all this, however, we wrestle with the issue of whether the registered car owner, even when not driving, should be called on the legal carpet through a piece of film and a ticket in the mailbox. This has stirred up debate, reported in that recent news story, over some of the camera-surveillance proposals around the country - with the sworn-denial device emerging as one possible answer to the problem. And there could be other problems, too, in having an inanimate mechanism, so to speak, making charges and levying fines.
Even so, the case for innovative action is strong, what with such arguments as last year's Virginia count of 38 fatalities in 7,000 collisions that occurred when motorists ignored red lights.
Almost all of us see the lights flouted every day. Just a few hours before I was writing these lines, I witnessed two typical for-instances on a couple of short trips from my home: In the first episode, I had to slam on the brakes, although I had a steady green light, while a tractor-type vehicle (like those used in grooming grassy medians, etc.) bored across in front of me on the crossing street; the driver plainly proceeded against a red light. In the second case, I was following a car that charged right on through a red shining in our lane, without a blip of a slow-down.
So if the legitimate rights of drivers and owners can somehow be protected in shaping a camera-detection system, there is certainly life-preserving reason enough to go for it. And not just to crack down harder on the red-light runners and the speeders but, I'd like to suggest, on some other highway hotdogs, too.
Maybe - just maybe, in view of the practical hurdles - the wizards could do some more brainstorming and give us camera-monitors to snap incriminating pictures of persistent tail-gaters and lunatic lane-changers. MEMO: Mr. Hebert, a former editor, lives in Norfolk.
by CNB