Traffice Cameras

A recent story at msnbc gets into some of the issues with red light cameras, and I also think that some of the same things will apply to automatic speed cameras. While I dislike these kind of surveillance at a instinctual level, my biggest objection is very simple: conflict of interest. Most often the deals that set up the camera is often a revenue share between the company and city. The more citations there are, the more money both get.

Let me take a quick detour about metrics. I don't remeber offhand, but I heard one thing about software testing. In an attempt to create some metrics for the testing department, they set up metrics based on the number of bugs filed. So what happens? The testers start putting in as many bugs as they can, even splitting up simple problems into many "bugs"

So what might cities do once they have these traffice cameras in place? Well they might say, shorten the yellow light times to get more citations.

Now I'm not saying all cities do this, but the problem is that the incentives are in the wrong place. If it's truly a matter of public safetly like they talk about, then the fact they do not pay for themselves shouldn't matter. Do traffice lights pay for themselves? Do police officers generate enough revenue to pay for themselves? No, we pay for these things out of our taxes for the public good. If traffice cameras are really about safety, lets talk about it on that basis, how much money are we willing to pay for for how much improvement in safety. So do the red light cameras have enough improvement in safety vs. how much they cost?

The fact that some cities are considering taking them down tells me I might know the answer to the above question. There are other measures we can take to improve safety besides wholesale surveilence that lines the pockets of the city and private companies.