A southwest Toledo man is organizing a petition drive he hopes will lead to a referendum to end Toledo’s use of stationary redlight cameras and handheld speed cameras.
“I only need 11,000 signatures to do it, which shouldn’t be too hard — many people don’t like them [speed and red-light cameras],” said Chester Straley, who attributes his particular animus to getting two camera-based tickets on the same day and his wife getting two from the same traffic signal.
Mr. Straley plans to begin collecting signatures from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Friday at the Reynolds Corners Branch Library, 4833 Dorr St.
He said he also has requested records from the city regarding local cameras’ maintenance, calibration, and timer settings.
Among the petition’s stated goals is to get Toledo “to stop doing business with a company that has a track record of violating the law and unfair practice of law enforcement.”
Officers of Australia-based Redflex, which has a U.S. office in Arizona, were found to have bribed a city manager in Chicago and made illegal campaign contributions in Columbus and Cincinnati in order to obtain red-light camera contracts in those cities.
Redflex, which also operates Toledo’s camera-based enforcement, is “a bunch of crooks,” Mr. Straley asserted.
“Only a state or city representative can enforce the law,” he argued.
Redflex has managed the Toledo cameras since the local program’s start in 2001. It initially deployed 20 cameras scattered across the city, with another 23 added in the years following.
All but a pair on the Anthony Wayne Trail near the Toledo Zoo are at intersections and enforce traffic signals, with many also enforcing the speed limit. The Trail cameras by the zoo enforce only the speed limit.
As in other communities, Redflex provides cameras and associated technology in exchange for getting a cut of the revenue. Vehicle owners wishing to contest their citations may appear before a hearing officer.
The $120 fines assessed in Toledo for camera-based violations are considered civil penalties and do not result in any points assessments or other records on drivers’ licenses. Among vehicle owners’ options for defense is to sign an affidavit naming a different individual as a vehicle’s driver at the time of an offense.
Toledo’s budget this year expects its share of fines from stationary red cameras to be $1.8 million after operator RedFlex takes its share. The city’s projected take from hand-held speed enforcement cameras would be $5.6 million.
Toledo’s use of automated enforcement has put it at odds with state lawmakers, who acted to require that a law enforcement officer be present for all traffic citations and to withhold state funding equivalent to the fines assessed for non-compliant tickets.
The former resulted in the city deploying police officers using hand-held cameras to issue speeding citations. Those citations also are processed through Redflex, with motorists only learning of their tickets when a bill arrives in the mail.
Mr. Straley said his petition’s intent includes abolishing that practice and requiring all speeding tickets to be issued directly by police.
“The city of Toledo shall not have a civil penalties [sic] for traffic violations,” the petition reads in part.
Gretchen DeBacker, the city’s legislative director, said Thursday that while the city respects “the people’s right to use the petition process,” it believes its traffic cameras are an effective safety tool.
“Traffic-enforcement cameras serve an important deterrent effect. We know that speeding contributes to fatal and non-fatal injury accidents. And we obviously want to deter drivers from running red lights. We hope that our citizens understand that these cameras help keep our roads safer for families throughout Toledo.”
She pointed to a recent National Transportation Safety Board report on speeding that found, among other things, that automated enforcement is effective at reducing traffic speeds.
Traffic-safety advocacy organizations including the American Automobile Association, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and the National Safety Council also have argued that camera enforcement is particularly effective at reducing high-speed “T-bone” collisions involving drivers running red lights.
But a study published last summer by Justin Gallagher, an assistant professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University, challenged the assertion that red-light cameras have significant traffic-safety benefits.
Citing the results when a referendum in Houston shut down that city’s 66-intersection red-light camera program, Mr. Gallagher wrote that while angle collisions increased at intersections where cameras were removed, that was more than offset by a decrease in other types of crashes.
And camera critics argue that camera-based speeding tickets’ safety benefit is muted by the fact drivers aren’t pulled over right away even if an officer is holding the camera, and thus remain unaware until much later that they’ve been caught speeding.
First Published March 15, 2019, 12:00 a.m.
