Cop cameras don't just catch speeders, they raise cash

I think it's great. Speeders are killers and maimers and i say make they 
pay big time.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/244/story/47592.html

Cop cameras don't just catch speeders, they raise cash
By Frank Greve | McClatchy Newspapers

WA****NGTON — The leafy capital suburb of Chevy Chase Village is a great 
place to live but you wouldn't want to visit there.

At least not by car. Easy-to-miss automated speed cameras on its half-
mile main drag, where the speed limit is 30 mph, caught 3,500 speeders on 
their first day of operation last fall. Before that, the norm was six 
tickets a day.

Many speeders first learn they've been caught when citations, along with 
photographic evidence, show up at the addresses that match the 
violators' license plates.

Be forewarned: More than 300 U.S. communities use automated "cop cam" 
systems like Chevy Chase's. They're after not just speeders but also red-
light violators and railroad-crossing jumpers.

In the works are bus-mounted cop cams that ticket bus lane intruders, cop 
cams to punish speeders in highway construction zones, even cop cam 
systems that ticket motorists based on a car's average speed over a mile. 
They catch drivers who brake for known camera sites, then resume 
speeding.

Three more tangible advantages excite municipal officials:

    * Cop cams suppress violations effectively by all accounts, at least 
around known camera sites. In one widely cited study, six speed cameras 
posted on an eight-mile stretch of the Loop 101 freeway in Scottsdale cut 
speeders by 88 percent over a nine-month period.

    * Cop cams reduce accidents, by most accounts. The frequent exception 
is more rear-enders, due to sudden stops on yellow at intersections where 
drivers know that the light is camera-monitored. Reductions in more 
hazardous right-angle crashes more than offset the added rear-enders, 
police say.

    * The third reason, which municipal officials downplay, is that cop 
cams can be cash cows.

            In Chevy Chase, for example, where speeding tickets brought 
in about $8,000 monthly before cop cams, "We are routinely bringing in 
approximately a quarter-million dollars per month," Geoffrey Biddle, 
Chevy Chase's village manager, told his Board of Managers in February.

            For a community of 2,000 with an annual budget of $4.6 
million, that's a bonanza. What's more, because locals know enough to 
evade the cop cams, the village's new revenue mostly comes from 
outsiders, rather like a commuter tax.

(snip)