Until midnight on Thursday, June 30, a video or still camera could record drivers in parts of Fairfax County and Fairfax City who ran red lights. The "photo red" program ended on Friday, July 1, after a bill extending its life-time died in the Virginia General Assembly’s House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety back in February.
"It’s kind of hard to believe that a program that works that well, is so well-supported, and has that much of a positive outcome could be going down the wayside," said Bob Carlisle, chief of police at the Vienna Police Department. "It’s a very, very effective program. It’s improved driving behavior … I think it’s a program that overwhelming majority of our town and other jurisdictions supports."
Between June and December 2004, the Virginia Department of Transportation conducted a study at the behest of Whittington Clement, Virginia Secretary of Transportation, analyzing "photo red." As part of the study, researchers conducted a public opinion survey for "photo red" and found that in Fairfax County, 64 percent of respondents favored the red light camera program while 46 percent opposed it. Seventy-seven percent of respondents thought the program could improve safety, and 23 percent thought it could not.
"It’s led to a significant decrease in red-light running, in T-bone accidents," said Sen. Jeannemarie Devolites-Davis (R-34).
According to the study, red light cameras did minimize T-bone accidents, or accidents caused when a car runs a red light and collides with the side of a car crossing the intersection, but led to an increase in rear-end crashes.
According to Carlisle and Del. J. Chapman Petersen (D-37), who served on Militia, Police and Public Safety, the main arguments against red light cameras had to do with invasion of privacy and their alleged use as a moneymaker for local governments.
"The primary concern was that these cameras weren’t accountable, made mistakes, and that there were innocent people being punished, either by camera malfunctions or by prosecutorial overzealousness," said Petersen.
"To think it’s some sort of privacy issue being used as an ideological hook for cameras is very frustrating," said Laurie Genevro Cole, a member of the Vienna Town Council.
"Our program was a net loss over the four years (the VDOT study) looked at it," said Carlisle. "Some years, it was a slight revenue, some years a loss, but overall it was a net loss."
ACCORDING TO the study, the red light cameras were a net loss of $52,677 to Vienna; each citation cost Vienna nearly $30. For Fairfax County overall, the cameras were a $97,811 loss, but for Fairfax City, they added $11,004 in revenue.
Vienna’s "photo red" cameras were different than those of other jurisdictions. The cameras took short videos rather than still photos of the cars that ran the red lights, allowing officers monitoring the cameras to take mitigating circumstances into account.
"Our system was one of the best," said Vienna Mayor M. Jane Seeman. "The tapes were reviewed by police officers every day … I was watching a tape one time and saw a fire truck coming down the street, and the car in front of it had to pull into the intersection, so, theoretically, it had run the red light. But it wasn’t at fault."
The bill extending the life of "photo red," SB 721, was patroned by Sen. John S. Edwards (D-21) in December 2004. The Senate passed the bill 31-9 in January, but Speaker of the House William J. Howell (R-28) referred it to Militia, Police and Public Safety, where it failed.
"If (the bill) had been sent to the Transportation Committee, it would’ve passed," said Petersen. "Let’s just say they named MPP the committee where bills came to die. It was one of those things: it came up every year I was in legislature, which was four years, and it was always just a voter too shy to pass."
"I intend to bring legislation back to restart the program," said Devolites-Davis. "I think it’s criminal that the legislation to extend the program was killed, because it has been so effective."
"We’re still going to maintain an effort to write those violations," said Carlisle. "The word to put out is, don’t start running red lights just because the program’s over."