The city is debating implementation of traffic light video and photo cameras to catch red light violators. The decision is if the city should implement a one year trial with the equipment or not.
If decided favorably, the cameras would be installed at approximately six different Bellevue locations.
You can have a say in this matter on Monday 8:00pm, December 10th at the Bellevue City Hall, they are looking for community members feedback
NO CAMERAS:
1. In the meeting they basically said that this was not a safety issue.
2. They also said the revenue would likely be only enough to pay for the system. Ironically if nobody runs a red light the program will cost the city upwards of $700,000 a year.
3. The cameras are video cameras running and recording at all times. I’m not into big brother…
So there you go, no saftey increase, may cost us a pile of money, and is a privacy concern.
Wierd. I was just telling my wife how irritating it was that everyone seems to run the red light on 8th street in front of Ruth’s Chris steak house. No to the cameras though, we’ve got enough police presense already.
I just watched the COB meeting from last night, and it was quite interesting.
The council all said they were only doing it for safety, but in all the reports there is a very mixed bag of stats. They kept repeating stories of people going through intersections on yellow and such, which is an annoyance not a safety concern.
After much research online it seems that the people selling the devices say how much safer things are, but in the real world places like Virgina’s study said they have zero impact and had the projects yanked.
Seattle just got back their report saying that accidents went up in the test cases, and then immediately recommended to add another 20! The real story was that the program was generating almost a million bucks….
If cities want to generate revenue then just say so, don’t try to feed us B.S. about safety when the results are inconclusive at best.