I'm not sure if its in the article (haven't read it yet) but one of our local towns was caught shortening the yellow on its camera traffic lights, but they continued to deny it.

The whole traffic camera light just bothers me to no end. The idea that a private company profits off of enforcement of public laws, not to mention the MASSIVE conflict of interest that the private company AND the cities have to do whatever possible to "encourage" running the lights so that revenue can be increased.

In my opinion, every single citation should be handed down by a human being that can be personally challenged in court.

The problem with traffic citations is they are considered almost a civil administrative offense, which means its considered a low level offense, even though the monetary costs are huge and because your freedom is not in jeopardy, you don't have the same rights to contest and rules of court and appeals as you do with a real criminal matter, so they can get away with a lot more.

In the case of speed cameras, some of our local juristictions have an Officer that sits by the speed camera and supposedly fills out the citation as you drive by and get caught, but not so with the red light camera. The tickets are filled out after the fact, with no one actually present on scene to be questioned about things like traffic forced you to stop in the middle of the intersection, etc. Or whether the darn thing just plain malfunctioned.

Officers who run radar get regularly challenged about testing their radar gun before and after each stop, not to mention their training and being able to distinquish between vehicles, using the doppler sound from the gun, yet with speed and red light cameras, we are entirely relying on machines to make the determination of whether you are guilty or not and assume they are always working properly.

What really bothers me the most is the amount of crap that our local governments are getting away with and almost nobody is rising up and saying enough is enough. We all complain and grumble, but then the same idiots get elected over and over again, when just tells them that their policies are either wanted or their constituents are so apathetic that they can just do whatever they want.

The next trend is going to be mandetory GPSs in your car that determine your speed and location for the authorities at all times.

Don't laugh. Rental car companies already have them and charge customers "fees" when their GPS shows they were speeding and my state is spending huge bucks studying and testing GPS systems so that you will be taxed based on where and when you drive...it wouldn't take much more to just mail you a ticket everytime you exceed 55 mph based on the GPS.