So, once upon a time, there was a man named Stephen.
And Stephen really hates red light cameras, so he kept going to his garage and finding
a long pole.
And he'd purposely pushed the cameras so they were no longer pointed where they were supposed
to be.
Rendered them useless.
He called himself the "Red-Light Camera 'Robin Hood'."
Steven even told NPR that the cops had confiscated his painter's extension rod as evidence.
The story is a little less cute once he started cutting wires.
(TV report:)
"Police call it felony criminal mischief."
But it's not just people on the fringes like Stephen who turned sour on these.
This is Laurel Canyon and Victory Boulevard.
And I'm here not because there's something interesting to show you.
Rather it's the lack of anything interesting.
This replaced piece of concrete right here is where there used to be a red light camera.
One among 100 spread across 36 stoplights.
That are now all gone.
Legally gone.
(Councilmember:)
"Let it die.
Enough already."
(Garcetti:)
"Go ahead and just take a vote on it."
(Recorder:)
"13 ayes."
(Garcetti:)
"Okay."
Why did the city of Los Angeles get rid of all of theirs?
(show open)
(Beeber:)
"It was really a shock.
I mean, they really did not expect this to happen."
(Television report:)
"The LA city council voted unanimously to turn off the cameras."
(Beeber:)
"It was a national story, and I was on the CBS evening news."
Jay Beeber might be California's fiercest red light camera opponent.
(Beeber:)
"The public is blaming the police for it, and really it's the politician's fault."
Instead of taking a "Bart Simpson" approach with paint rollers and petty vandalism, Jay
is more like Lisa.
Using math, science, and old-fashioned political persuasion.
(Beeber:)
"There were about 109 cities that were running programs.
Now I think there are about 29 or 30."
This all starts in 1965, when a company that makes swimming timers in the Netherlands claims
the invention of the first red light camera.
During the 1970s, cameras made their way into Australia, Britain, Hong Kong, South Africa,
and Taiwan.
In 1982, a New Yorker ran a red light, and his car snatched one-year-old Jocelyn right
from her mother's arms, dragging her stroller 13 blocks before the car finally let go.
Miraculously, the baby would survive this.
But this story brought camera enforcement to Manhattan.
(Beeber:)
"A lot of people out there who believe that that is a way to stop catastrophic collisions,
they're well intentioned.
They think that we just simply ticket enough people, we're going to get them to stop this
really terrible behavior."
Cities were willing to try.
But the problem is, city budgets are tight and the cameras are quite expensive.
Cities across California want to save lives.
So these growing red light camera companies would approach police departments and city
engineers and say, hey, we've got a way for you to do that.
(KIIS FM voice over:)
"102.7 KIIS FM freeway update!"
(KIIS FM traffic reporter:)
"Good morning.
On the 134 eastbound..."
So, about 20 years ago, Los Angeles signed its deal with Lockheed.
Yes, the airplane company.
Rather than LA paying for all the equipment and installation upfront, the company would
take a cut from each ticket.
Here's how it breaks down:
The state legally sets the ticket price— $271 at the time, with California keeping
half.
Another $60 to Lockheed to pay for the cameras, and the city gets the rest.
This is called a "revenue sharing agreement," since the city is paying as they go, one red
light runner at a time.
When cities don't have to come up with millions of dollars upfront, a revenue-sharing contract
makes a red light camera system really accessible to pretty much any city.
Councils would eagerly vote yes.
Revenue sharing helped camera programs explode from coast to coast, from a few dozen cities
to over 500.
But revenue sharing comes with a big paradox.
Cameras that work— well, they also stop generating revenue.
Money needed for that camera to keep existing there.
Look at all these people running red lights.
All right, let's put in a camera and... ticket time!
Revenue sharing means some of that money is paying off the camera.
But let's say it works.
And nobody runs a red light ever again.
Well, the money dries up, and there's no way to pay off that camera.
But one that doesn't really reduce red light running can keep printing tickets forever.
You know what this reminds me of?
Online dating.
Bear with me.
I pay them monthly so they can solve my problem.
I want to meet a girl and pair off.
If I don't believe their service works, I'm not going to pay them anything.
But if I do believe it works, and it does— well, I'm also going to stop paying them.
No, what they need is for me to believe in it and go on lots of dates, but never actually
pair off.
Never solve the underlying problem.
That way, I keep paying them forever.
This sort of scenario may have been happening in Menlo Park.
California has open records laws.
It let Jay, get a hold of an email where the sergeant running the red light camera program
wanted to know what happens when people stop running red lights because of the cameras.
Well a rep from the company wrote her back to say.
(Email:)
"It's normal in the first few months for high numbers, and then it will begin to decline
and stabilize.
Where it stops is anyone's guess.
I can say.
At intersections that have right turns enforced, those continue to produce consistent numbers."
"Consistent numbers?"
I thought the goal was to have zero as the number.
Jay tells me he believes red light camera companies (and cities that operate them) may
be too good at targeting the wrong kind of violation.
(Beeber:)
"We tend to think of it all as one thing, as red light running.
But you can break it down into three main categories, which is straight through red
light running.
That's when you're going straight through the intersection."
The really dangerous kind that red light cameras are designed to prevent.
Cars charging straight ahead at full speed, causing potentially deadly T-bone crashes.
(Beeber:)
"There's red light running that has to do with making a left turn."
When there's no green arrow, we have to judge an acceptable gap.
As the light turns red, the oncoming cars should be stopping.
Leave this judgment up to us humans, and sometimes we're going to end up running the red light.
Like driving straight, the wide, sweeping left-hand turn means you really don't have
to slow down all that much.
Combine that with traffic charging ahead full speed and we've got another T-bone crash.
But the third type is different.
(Beeber:)
"There's red light running that has to do with making a right turn."
Right turns don't cause T bones.
They cause sideswipes.
And a tight corner means we have to slow way down— below 15 mph.
Perhaps that's why we're kind of careless with them.
Right turning on red is legal in most places in the United States after a full stop.
The only problem is, sometimes we get a little sloppy about that full stop part.
Combine with something we all do wrong with the camera that's always paying attention—
and you have a recipe for the public turning sour on automated enforcement.
The Los Angeles Times sifted through a mountain of ticket data and they found in Southern
California, 80% of the tickets went to people rolling right-hand turns on red.
That means the T-bone crash red light running only gets 20% of the tickets or less.
(Beeber:)
"Everybody loves the idea, oh, we can stop all those horrible red light runners and everybody's
in favor, and then they realize they're the ones getting the tickets for some slow rolling
right turn at two o'clock in the morning and getting a $500 ticket."
And then this town somehow managed to make the situation even worse.
(KEWB voice over:)
"Redding's number-one hit music station!"
I do think it's a little bit fitting that I'm talking about red light cameras in Reading.
But at this corner here, one of the most dangerous intersections in town.
The city put in a red light camera and somebody got a ticket for making a right-hand turn.
He got video and everything.
Rolling right through!
So, he asked for advice on the internet and people, it's the Internet: "Oh, you are a
monster.
What a dangerous habit."
Well, it is.
"Oh, you should stand in front of my car and let me roll 10 miles an hour into you."
A little bit mean.
But there's something about this corner I want to show you.
The city actually paints a white line on the right turn here because there are so many
cars making the turn to enter the freeway, they want to keep drivers moving.
They even took the crosswalk away on this side just to get rid of that extra conflict.
So, if the message the intersection is telling you is "keep moving," but then they put in
cameras to say, "no, don't keep moving," what message is the intersection conveying to the
driver?
The camera even enforces during this green arrow, the crosswalk is stopped.
There's literally nothing or no one to hit.
As a driver, you intuitively feel how low risk the situation is, so you're more likely
to roll the right turn.
It almost sounds like they're baiting a fish hook.
(Beeber:)
"I don't think they had any cameras or ticketing rolling right turns.
What happened was, month after month after month, the city was in arrears to the red
light camera company.
At some point, the red light camera company convinced them to put in a couple of cameras
that were going to ticket a lot of people for rolling returns."
This apparently impacts revenue in a significant way because another city did the opposite.
West Hollywood's red light camera program focused solely on drivers going straight through
the intersection, which, if you know West Hollywood, it's actually pretty remarkable.
After the city adjusted stop lights to make them safer and stopped ticketing rolling right
turns, some cameras only wrote three tickets per week by 2020.
The city chose not to renew their camera contract.
(Beeber:)
"There are people that make a rolling right turn in a dangerous manner.
Almost hit me when I was crossing the street.
(Beeber:)
"Those people?
I don't have a problem with those people getting ticketed, quite frankly.
It's the person getting that ticket at $500 at 200 in the morning when no one's around,
or even in the middle of the day when no one's around.
(Beeber:)
"That's not an appropriate punishment for what they did."
(TV report:)
"We looked at every accident at all 32 red light camera intersections for six months
before the cameras were installed and six months after.
(TV report:)
"20 of the 32 intersections show accidents up.".
This is the news report that got Jay Beeber interested in red light cameras, to begin
with.
(Beeber:)
"A whole bunch of controversy about whether that report was accurate, and we said it wasn't
accurate.
They can't both be telling the truth."
So Jay spent his winter of 2010 digging through Google Scholar, finding engineering reports—
some of the same ones we've looked at in the last two videos.
The research convinced him the way Los Angeles and many cities use cameras is flawed.
So, with his concerns in hand, Jay did what any of us in a democracy would do.
He took 'em downtown to city hall.
Savvier council members saw public opinion was rapidly souring.
(Beeber:)
"I was talking to their staff members.
There's a lot of stuff they didn't know, a lot of stuff their bosses and city council
members didn't know."
It sounds like he showed up at just the right time.
Over 60,000 red light camera tickets were sitting there unpaid.
Judges had ruled that the violation alone only proves that the car was running the red
light.
So, if somebody ignores a red light camera ticket, the city can't legally report them
to a credit bureau.
The DMV can't ding their license with points until after they've confessed.
So... why pay the ticket?
That's a confession.
Ending a red light camera program would mean persuading the biggest proponents.
(Beeber:)
"There was some pushback from the police department and from the engineering department in the
city."
The Los Angeles Police Department have a civilian oversight commission; regular people who vote
to set LAPD's internal policy.
And those were the people Jay wanted to talk to.
Taking the research, and framing it through his west coast libertarian lens, Jay made
his own summaries, which he used to persuade members of the police commission.
(Commissioner:)
"I just don't think we can give a green light to this red light report."
(Commissioner:)
"I've read through all the data, and I have concerns about this issue.
With the turning right on the red light."
(Commissioner:)
"I want to be convinced that the program is going to work."
(Commissioner:)
"I move that the commission not approve the department report."
(Commissioner:)
"All in favor?"
(Entire commission:)
"Aye."
(Commissioner:)
"Opposed?
The motion is carried unanimously."
(Petru:)
"When I was younger, I really didn't like [red light cameras] because I heard stories
of people who just got ticketed for unfair violations.
And I didn't like the idea of being ticketed when it was not a police officer.
I thought that was kind of cheating.
(Petru:)
"But as I started walking and biking more, I just started thinking that it's so frustrating
when you have these scary near misses."
Petru hasn't even started college yet, but he's already trying to advocate to make the
streets safer near where he lives.
(Petru:)
"Massachusetts has a bill that would make red light cameras legal.
There's a way to do it right."
We all learn a lot from forcing ourselves to think the opponent's side.
Petru has now seen the vulnerabilities that can kill off an old red light camera program.
So how would Jay consult to create an effective and ethical *new* red light camera program?
(Beeber:)
"Number one, if there is any revenue left over at the end of the month that it goes
to some other lockbox somewhere that the city cannot touch, and therefore that's the very
first thing that you can turn to and say, 'you know what?
We are doing this for safety.
We are not doing this for revenue that extra money is like we don't even have it.'"
(Beeber:)
"Number two, I would do everything I possibly could to make sure that people have enough
lifetime, that they have enough information as to what they need to do to comply with
the law.
If you do the engineering properly, you're not going to have a red light problem."
(Beeber:)
"Number three, I would tailor the ticket price to the type of violation of this.
If it's a slow-rolling right turn and there's nobody around, it's just a warning.
(Beeber:)
"One second after the yellow violation.
Again, maybe it's a warning.
Maybe it's a $25 ticket or something like that.
(Beeber:)
"You put somebody in danger, depending on how much you put them in danger, maybe it's
a little bit more expensive.
(Beeber:)
"And I think that would go a long way to show them that you're really serious about safety
and you're not really doing it for revenue."
We frame this as a red light camera fight, but opponents and proponents really are on
the same team, using public tools to make public roadways safer for everybody.
I get the impression that Jay's crusade against red light cameras in LA is not "Red Light
Robin Hood" 's anarchy.
In fact, it's quite the opposite.
(Beeber:)
"When you engender distrust between the public and the police, between the public and elected
officials, between the public and the court, it breaks down society.
(Beeber:)
"You don't want to give people the idea that you're out there to make money on that.
(Beeber:)
"And we lose faith in our institutions, and we need government, we need our institutions,
and we need people to trust the government or elected officials are out there trying
to help them, not trying to make money."
To learn more how red light cameras work and how to fix dangerous stoplights, check out
May and June's red light camera videos.
But there's a lot more than red light cameras.
Coming soon.
This walkway is not great!
(terrified shouting)
You think you're in an earthquake.
People keep changing gears and going— vroom!
They spent even more money building this: a park over I-70.
I don't work for the city.
(captioning made possible by Patreon supporters)