Northern Virginia motorists who thought that red light camera ticketing was found unconstitutional several years ago will be surprised to find new cameras popping up all over the area. Earlier this year, Arlington County and the City of Alexandria installed cameras at several busy intersections and now Falls Church is joining the recent safety mania that has produced bans on talking on the phone, texting, and even eating while driving. However, despite the best intentions of state legislators, these laws will never eliminate bad drivers.
Safety advocates argue that red light cameras cameras will save lives, but this begs the question: how many lives will actually be saved thanks to this new intrusion of government into our daily lives? According to a study released by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) in 2007, although the presence of cameras reduced red light running, there was no clear decrease in the number of injuries caused by red light running.
Worse still, VDOT’s analysis of crash and injury severity reported that “In the aggregate for all jurisdictions, a net negative safety impact was found.” Depending on the jurisdiction and statistical methods used, VDOT reported increases in the number of crashes and in the severity of the injuries or property damage almost across the board.
Additionally, the cameras in Falls Church are placed in areas where the speed limit is already set at 25 miles per hour and lights are set to a “traffic calming” pattern which forces motorists to stop frequently. As a result of the generally sedate driving conditions in Falls Church, there were a grand total of 22 crashes during the seven year study period, or about three crashes per year. Moreover, the data showed that there was less than one injury per year in Falls Church due to red light running.
Despite the lack of evidence for the efficacy of red light cameras, the VDOT report is nevertheless biased in their favor. The report’s summary opens with the harrowing statistic that red light running causes 800 deaths in the United States every year. Presumably the members of the Falls Church City Council who approved the installation of the cameras only read the scary executive summary without bothering to review the utter lack of statistical evidence for any safety benefits from red light cameras in their own jurisdiction.
To be sure, every death represents a tragedy, but is every death really preventable, and if so, is the government to be held accountable for the bad actions of irresponsible drivers? In the end, we as citizens have to make a decision whether we will allow our government to pass increasing numbers of laws supposedly for our own good. If we do not place some limits on the laws that are enacted in the name of vehicle safety, the only alternative may be for us to ban driving altogether.
