![]() ![]() ![]() That kind of treatment breeds resentment toward legitimate traffic enforcement, raises serious questions about government intrusion and in many cases makes roads and intersections less safe.Īs we noted some years ago when the village of Algonquin removed traffic cameras that were costing more to maintain than they were bringing in, the best way for motorists to free themselves of red-light monitoring is to adhere so strictly to regulations that the cameras lose their financial benefit. But we've seen all too often over the course of the past decade and a half that, rather than deploying cameras where they might do the most good, officials have placed them where they can produce the most money. If traffic cameras can improve safety in specific locations, then by all means, using them makes sense. Such arguments cut at the heart of the controversy over technological traffic enforcement. They also argued that the justification for the cameras was tainted by the guilty pleas of two public officials charged with taking bribes related to the cameras. Oak Brook officials argued all along that the cameras placed only on the Oakbrook Terrace side of the intersection served only to inconvenience, if not deter, shoppers at the mall and to produce revenues for the neighboring city. That led Oakbrook Terrace, where officials argued slow data reporting by the state held up the third-year report, to appeal to the courts. ![]() But, the agency said, when the one-year report arrived two years late and the three-year report not at all, IDOT revoked the permit. With that concern in mind, the Illinois Department of Transportation required Oakbrook Terrace to produce a report on the impact of the Route 83/22nd Street cameras after one year and again after three years of operation. Technological advances that can monitor traffic behaviors are not inherently bad, but there's little evidence to show that, on the whole, cameras designed to capture red-light or speeding violations make roads safer and some - as officials from neighboring Oak Brook argued in opposition to the Oakbrook Terrace cameras - can actually increase the possibility of an accident. ![]()
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