Since the Illinois House could vote today or tomorrow on whether to allow Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel the speed cameras he wants - and open the way for speed cams throughout Illinois - not only could a recent post on Illinois Review be helpful, but a brief scan of the Washington Times' editorial today addresses the topic, too. Here's how it starts:
Traditional law-enforcement duties are best performed by men, not machines. This is the case in Maryland, where speed cameras continue to pronounce the innocent guilty, regardless of mounting evidence that the measuring devices are faulty.
Will Foreman, the owner of Eastover Auto Supply, found this out the hard way on Monday when a Prince George’s County judge refused to consider proof that the cameras don’t always get it right. Mr. Foreman had obtained internal documents from the town of Cheverly that described ongoing reliability problems with the automated ticketing machines. “Not only are the cameras still not functioning properly, they are now producing violations for invisible vehicles going 76 miles per hour (violation #79) and bicycles going 38 and 57 miles per hour (violation #2790 & #2783),” Town Administrator David Warrington wrote in a July 26 letter to Optotraffic, the operator of the dodgy equipment.
The rest is here.
