Quote:
Originally Posted by speed demon  How long does it take them to mail you the ticket? |
Also, that is one of the big problems with the whole concept. It typically takes 2-4 weeks, depending on the processor.
When you are stopped by a police officer, that has an immediate effect. It also might prevent you from perpetrating other and more serious crimes. Is the driver intoxicated? Did they just rob a bank? Are they on their way to their estranged girlfriend's house and plan to harm her?
A ticket camera can't see any of that, and couldn't do anything about it even if it could.
Of course in the vast majority of cases, it's not so dramatic. But the point is that you can run 100 red lights and who cares if cameras are snapping your picture? That does not stop you from that physical act.
The ticket in the mail is a lame form of positive reinforcement. In many cases the recipient doesn't even recall the event by the time they receive the ticket, making that reinforcement nearly useless.
The only proven method of improving safety is intelligent engineering of traffic patterns and signal timings. Make sure the yellow light signal timings are sufficient for the speed of the road and size of the intersection. Make sure that you are not bottling traffic up and forcing motorists into asinine traffic patterns which force the flow of traffic to be bunched up, getting stuck at nearly each and every traffic light (one of the primary contributors to both "road rage" and red light running in heavily populated areas).