A measure containing several reforms to the existing red-light camera law passed the Senate Thursday, disappointing some advocates who hoped to ban the cameras.
"This bill is designed to maintain the cash cow status quo Chicago realizes from gouging city motorists since 2003," Barnet Fagel, traffic safety researcher for the National Motorists Association, told The Expired Meter blog. Fagel has been one of the most outspoken critics of the cameras, appearing on "Chicago Tonight" and across the internet arguing to prohibit them.
The bill, advanced by Senate President John Cullerton, was an attempt to appease critics like Fagel and Sen. Dan Duffy (R-Lake Barrington), while still maintaining the nearly $50 million-per-year revenue stream generated by red-light camera tickets. It includes a number of new protections for drivers. For one, every ticket issued in Chicago must be reviewed either by a police officer, a technician or by a contractor not associated with the cameras or the city. The $100 fee for challenging an RLC ticket would be lifted by the bill; an image of every violation would be posted on the Internet for violators to see; and one type of violation, stopping over the line before turning right on red, would be banned completely.
(Read the full text of the bill here.)
It also contains language directed at one of the major criticisms raised by RLC opponents: the length of yellow lights. The bill re-states that intersections with cameras (like all other intersections) "must have a yellow change interval that conforms with the Illinois Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices."
Fagel and other critics have argued that red-light camera intersections have illegally short yellows, in an attempt to trap drivers. But an extensive Chicago Tribune investigation showed no evidence that any yellow lights were shorter than three seconds, the minimum according to federal law.
The bill has had an oddly personal dimension since it was first brought up: as it was debated in committee, Sen. Cullerton played footage of a few red-light camera violations to explain why the driver was being ticketed.
The driver in the footage, it turned out, was none other than Sen. Duffy, the cameras' main opponent.