Victorville California Driver Files Law Suit

Victorville still has 10 red light cameras and this upsets driver Mike Curran who claims they are illegal. He says his ticket came from Redflex in Arizona, not from law enforcement. NBC4's Inland Empire Reporter Craig Feigener explains what's at stake here.

The infraction carried a $490 fine and when Curran inspected the ticket he found that it was issued by an out-of-state company Redflex with no input from Victorville police officers. Curran launched a class-action lawsuit on the grounds that Victorville cannot hire a private company to do police work.  The cameras' owner, the Redflex Group, is headquartered in Phoenix. The company spent more than $146,000 installing the Victorville cameras and it made its money by issuing the tickets.

Columbus Ohio Cameras Hit $1M in Revenue

Columbus’ revenue from red-light cameras topped $1 million for the first time last year, and it was wasn’t only expanded monitoring that fueled the increase. More people also ran lights at intersections where cameras have been in place for four years or longer, suggesting that drivers are letting down their guard in places where automated enforcement is long-established.

In Columbus, the 12 cameras installed last year caught 9,700 red-light runners. But tickets also increased by almost 2,000 overall — or 11 percent — at intersections monitored by cameras since 2006 or 2007. It’s the first yearly increase since the entire set of cameras have been in place.

The city collected nearly $1.1 million last year from its share of red-light runners’ $95 tickets at all 30 intersections. That’s a 77 percent increase in revenue from 2010, attributable to both the extra cameras and the city’s receipt of a larger share of each ticket under its new contract with camera-maker Redflex Traffic Systems.

Belmar New Jersey Considering Red Light Cameras

The Belmar city council is considering whether or not to apply to have red-light cameras installed at various spots along Route 35. Last week at their work session meeting, a representative from a red-light camera company presented the council and mayor his findings of a test-run already conducted in the borough, as well as the benefits of such a system and how it would work.  Fines would be $85.

Belmar Police Chief Thomas Palmisano, who spoke openly regarding his support for the cameras as not only a means for catching violators but also as a tool for documenting traffic accidents, said a test camera at Route 35 and 10th Avenue witnessed 84 violations in a 10-hour period.  See Belmar Patch story. 

Iowa City Red Light Cameras Coming

The Iowa City City Council passed an ordinance allowing development of red-light cameras throughout town on its final consideration. Mayor Matt Hayek and Councilors Rick Dobyns, Terry Dickens, and Susan Mims voted in favor of the ordinance. Councilor Connie Champion maintained her position on the red-light cameras, voting "no" on all three considerations.

ATS vs Collier County Florida

Collier County stopped paying ATS the $50,000 monthly fee for using the cameras based on a new law that passed in Florida making the cameras illegal. NBC2 obtained a copy of an agreement which will be presented to the Board of County Commissioners in which the County would pay $522,000 to get out of its current contract with American Traffic Solutions. Collier County has 19 approaches that use red light cameras.