Traffic camera proposal meets resistance

Comments at a public hearing Tuesday were more negative than supportive of the Dothan Police Department’s proposal to install traffic cameras at major intersections.

In some cases, the objections were that a change intended to reduce collisions would cause them as drivers braking to avoid running a red light are rear-ended by another vehicle.

Other speakers didn’t like the idea of “Big Brother” intruding into their lives, a reference to the fictional dictator in George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” who kept everyone under complete surveillance.

Neither did they like that the city and the company it contracts with would make money off tickets that were issued.

Police Chief Greg Benton said right angle, or T-bone, collisions are direct results of people running red lights. “It is the most dangerous type of collision that you can encounter in any wreck,” Benton said.

He said statistics have shown overall accidents decreased about 25 percent where the program has been implemented.

Maj. Steve Parrish, who assists the chief in managing the department, said he and others have spent the last several months researching the possibility of implementing “red light cameras” at high-traffic intersections.

He said a lot of the complaints his department receives every day are about drivers running red lights. He said implementation of this program would address that issue and “would be a tremendous benefit to everybody here.”

Parrish said the program would have no upfront cost to the city because a company would install the equipment and take part of the revenue from the tickets, in this case planned to be $100 per violation. Benton said about 30 percent would go to the company and 70 percent to the city.

Parrish said a Dothan police officer would devote about four hours per week reviewing the photos and determining whether an actual violation had occurred. He said no photographs would be taken of drivers and no points would be deducted against their license or affect their insurance because it would be treated as a civil, not a criminal, violation.

“The main thing that we really look at is the ability for this program to be a force multiplier,” he said. Instead of having police officers sit at intersections to catch violators, with the cameras in place those resources could be devoted to other areas, he said.

The cameras would also help police track people who commit crimes, like a robber driving through intersections while fleeing the scene of the crime.

Using automated enforcement like traffic cameras is one of the safety measures recommended by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Other suggestions include enacting belt laws, lowering speed limits, conducting sobriety checkpoints, building roudabouts, mandating helmets for all drivers and toughening teen driver laws.

An analysis of red-light related motor vehicle crashes conducted by the Dothan Police Department showed motorists running red lights or failure to yield right of way was the prime contributing circumstance in 187, or 6 percent, of the 2,935 roadway crashes that Dothan police officers worked in 2009.

It also found that running red lights was the prime contributing circumstance in 64 percent of motor vehicle crashes with serious injuries in 2009.