UncleMacro

Speaking from the experience of living in "red light camera hell" (San Diego), the real reason the cameras exist is to make money. Our cameras were shut down for quite some time when a group of people sued. It turned out that some of the cameras were poorly calibrated and had other problems and tons of tickets were thrown out. But they also showed that the city has shortened the period of some of the yellow lights substantially in order to increase their income. Local TV stations had video of the old yellow light timing on one particularly high volume signal in Mission Beach. The time had been the same for years. When the city put in the red light cameras they shortened the yellow light time so that drivers would drive into the intersection based on the yellow light timing which they were used to and then would get nailed when the light unexpectedly turned red so quickly. Almost all the other cameras they installed were placed in high-speed intersections which already had relatively short yellow lights so they would make more money. All they had to do to reduce the red light violations substantially was increase the yellow light times to a "legitimate" period. The excuse for installing the cameras was safety but if the city made nothing off of the cameras, they wouldn't be there.

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