DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Anyone else get a Speeding ticket from Cameras

They need variable speed limits on highways like they have in Germany. Sometimes you have to go 50, sometimes you can go as fast as you want...

It would take them actually enforcing the laws that cause accidents though, like only being in the left to pass, not passing on the right and no handheld phone use.

I think y'all should just tell the government you would like them to track the GPS on your vehicle or your phone, and assure them that you will leave it turned on.. and if you crest a hill or change lanes to pass somebody and accidently go 48 in a 45 for a few seconds they just auto-generate a ticket and mail it to you... or they can just track your location via your GPS and the closest officer can come arrest you.

I also think they should focus a satellite on your house and if you leave your trash can out by the curb beyond what the local ordinance allows, they should pick up on that and send you a fine.

They can also use the GPS to determine that if you don't come to a complete 100% dead stop at every stop sign out in the country where you can see for miles that nobody is coming, the ticket is on its way..

Maybe y'all like being surveilled by your government all the time with technology and anybody who steps across the line even for a minute, even by accident... has no right to complain if they get caught by big brother... most of us don't like that feeling of always being a person of interest.....

Highway speeding, meh. For the most part, that's a non-issue. However, speeding in suburban or rural areas is risky and dangerous. There are intersections, cars turning and stopping, bikes, walkers, joggers, kids and pets. Slow down people.

There's a 1-mile stretch of open road between our house and my wife's work. It's a 4-lane road with a 40 MPH limit. It connects two busy streets and people use it to access either one. When I'm on it, cars are FLYING by me and I'm going 42-44. It's got a few turns and trees, so cops can easily hide. I've seen so many people get pulled over. I just giggle when a car passes me going 15-20 MPH faster saying, "You're going to get pulled over and if you don't, the light up ahead is super long and I'll meet you at the light."

After a few tickets in my youth, I learned my lesson. That's why I don't think lower ticket fines would help. If you got a $35 speeding ticket and knew each time was $35, some/most wouldn't care. If it's $135, most will avoid it like a rash.

And yeah, once your insurance finds out, good luck with your new rate.

To me, I think red light cameras should be okay. If you're not paying attention or don't care, running a red should be a automatic ticket because it puts lives at a higher risk than just "general speeding". I've already lost a cousin to someone burning a red.

webbage


By Jim Siegel
The Columbus Dispatch

Posted Jul 26, 2017 at 9:56 AM
Updated Jul 26, 2017 at 4:23 PM

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled 5-2 Wednesday that the state’s restrictions on how cities use red-light cameras are unconstitutional.

Despite the decision, the city of Columbus has no plans to pursue red light cameras, Cathy Collins, assistant director of public safety, said. The decision would have to come from City Council to fund the cameras.

A former lobbyist in Columbus City Hall, John Raphael, was moved to a halfway house earlier this month after serving about a year in prison for extorting campaign contributions to city officials from Redflex, the city’s red-light-camera vendor.

And even if Columbus or other Ohio cities have ideas about restarting their traffic camera operations, some lawmakers are already looking to make Wednesday’s court ruling a short-lived win.

“I think the cities will find they’ve won themselves a Pyyrhic victory,” said Rep. Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati, a member of House leadership who sponsored the law as a senator. “That is because we have other tools in the toolkit that we plan to deploy when we get back in September.”

The law, Senate Bill 342, required, among other things, that cities, townships and counties utilizing red-light cameras must have an officer present at each camera — a provision that made it too costly for most local entities to use the cameras.

Join the conversation at Facebook.com/dispatchpolitics and connect with us on Twitter @OhioPoliticsNow

The case is based on a challenge by the city of Dayton, though other cities, including Columbus, Akron, Dayton and Toledo, also had challenged the law with similar lawsuits. Before dismantling the program, Columbus had 44 cameras positioned at 38 intersections.

For its part, Dayton has no plans to “immediately” reemploy traffic cameras, according to the city’s law director Barbara Doseck. She said the city will mull their options to do what’s best for the community.


“What will be interesting to see will be the legislator’s response to this,” Doseck said. She expects some attempt to circumvent the ruling on a state level.

Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said in a statement: “Citizens have been asking for red light cameras to come back so we can make our neighborhoods safer and reduce accidents. We are reviewing the ruling and will soon come up with a plan for the best way to move forward with our program.”

Kent Scarrett, executive director of the Ohio Municipal League, said the ruling strongly shows that the legislature overstepped its boundaries into home rule. The decision, he said, enforces that municipalities have local police power and the ability to determine those activities in the best interest of the community.

The lead opinion by Justice Patrick Fischer found the law “infringes on the municipality’s legislative authority” and “limits the municipality’s legislative powers without serving an overriding state interest.”

Bill supporters wrote the law as an alternative to a straight red-light camera ban that some thought was more likely to be struck down by the courts. The law was designed to make the cameras a secondary enforcement tool.



But Fischer wrote: “Requiring an officer’s presence at a traffic camera directly contradicts the purpose of a traffic camera — to conserve police resources.” He also noted that the law does not actually require the officer to witness the violation, so the camera is still the primary enforcer.


Justices Judith French and Sharon Kennedy wrote separately that the law violates the Ohio Constitution’s Home Rule Amendment because it fails to “prescribe a rule of conduct upon citizens generally.”

The ruling also overturned provisions of the law requiring cities to give drivers leeway for speeding cameras, and that cities first complete safety studies of intersections where cameras are being considered. The law said no ticket can be issued if the vehicle is going less than 6 mph over the speed limit in a school zone or park, or 10 mph in other locations.

The speeding leeway provision, Fischer said, is a de facto speed limit increase. He also questioned the purpose of the safety study because the placement of cameras is not connected to the results of the study.

Seitz stressed that the ruling applies only to home-rule cities, and the law remains in effect in counties and townships.

Dayton previously won at the trial court level, but that decision was overturned by the Second District Court of Appeals.

“The Ohio Constitution gives local communities the power to govern themselves without the heavy hand of the state needlessly interfering,” said Keary McCarthy, executive director of the Ohio Mayors Alliance. “Today’s ruling reaffirmed that right.”

Seitz said home rule, enacted at at time when rural areas had over-sized voting power at the Statehouse, has “outlived its usefulness.”


The fight over traffic cameras “ain’t over by a long shot,” Seitz said. When lawmakers return to session in September, he said, they will look at reducing state local government funding to any city that utilizes the cameras.

Lawmakers, Seitz said, also may require that camera citations be processed through the municipal court system, rather than the administrative “kangaroo courts” that cities have set up. “When you do that, you begin to take the profit out of policing-for-profit.”

Justices Patrick DeWine and William O’Neill dissented.

“Today’s decision has the unfortunate impact of further muddling a body of law that is already hopelessly confused,” DeWine wrote. “As in many cases in this area, the result today seems to have everything to do with the policy preferences of the majority and nothing to do with the language of the Home Rule Amendment.”

jsiegel@dispatch.com

@phrontpage

akeiper@dispatch.com


@keiperjourno

I hear there is a new one up on I76/224 between I77 and I71. Keep ya eyes open.

While your entitled to an opinion the FACT is that a speed LIMIT is the LIMIT and not a suggestion. It is true though that outside of a school or work zone they don't normally strictly enforce it unless your 5 miles over due to the cost of processing not being worth it for the city. A cop can still pull you over anytime he wants for going even 1 mph over the limit and some do.

In most states unless your passing someone then you are to ALWAYS be in the right lane until your ready to pass the person in front of you. So yes, slower moving traffic should always be in the right lane. That doesn't mean the left lane has a free pass to drive like maniacs. Driving the speed limit in all cases increases your chance to actually make it where you are driving.

It's not about the scenery. It's about the fact that your operating a 2000 pound sledgehammer and the other people on the road deserve not to be put in danger from it. Respect other people's right to get where they have to go safely and lets all just get where we gotta go.

I'm not a big fan of traffic cameras except for running red lights. In this case though people have voted for the law to be changed to how they want it so they way I feel about it is that the people should be able to get what they vote for.

I will say that in areas with a high volume of traffic accidents I have no problem with stiff fines, cameras, and/or cops being used to get it under control. I mean we all want to get our kids to school and back safe and sound.

It's really bizarre how differently laws are applied throughout Ohio.

When I lived/worked in Columbus, Cleveland, Streetsboro, and Kent, if you blew through a school zone during the restricted times, you were odds on to get an expensive ticket. (and rightly so)

When I drive around Youngstown, I almost get hit, and almost get cursed out of I slow down to go 20 in the school zone, during the restricted hours. I have had friends with me, and I always slow down for the school zones, and they're like "What's wrong?" It's amazing to me how some of the cops will run radar all day long on other streets, but will ignore the school zones during the time when kids are going to, or from, school. I can remember one time, at the school on Indianola, in Boardman, where there was a cop in the parking lot during the time school let out. It is the only time I can remember seeing one. I do 20 anyway, because it's habit, and because I would never want to hit a kid.

If cops want to write tickets, start patrolling the school zones ... at least around the Youngstown area. I guarantee they'll write their fill, plus more, and actually do more for safety than writing tickets on busy roads with artificially slow speed limits. (I'm talking to you, Girard and Poland, where 4 lane roads have 25 MPH speed limits)

That's the thing, if a city wanted to truly "write as many tickets at they wanted", they could. I don't see many doing that though*. So the assertion that cops writing tickets is purely a money grab and nothing else doesn't hold water. If so, there would be cops out jamming up the public non-stop. That could easily pay for more cops and equipment.

*Sure, there's always that small town that has 3 miles of a 25 MPH zone through Main Street and a cop is camped out behind a bush. They rely on that revenue from outsiders, but in most towns we all live in, I don't see this level of scrutiny.

On the So Cal freeways, 80 is almost the norm. I guess people get so excited that there's no traffic, it's like releasing a captive cheetah back into the wild. The Cops for the most part, allow it. Probably because just about everyone is going 80 anyway.

I have a bad experience with the Camera tickets as well. At least my wife did anyway. She went to renew her driver's license one day and the DMV told her she had a suspended license. We looked into it, and it turned out she had been given a red-light violation ticket, and then failed to show up to court for it. (Apparently in Cali, this was a suspend-able offense) We had never received anything in the mail about it, so we dug further.

It turns out some girl took out her mom's car and blew threw a red light late at night. They did a look-up on the car and the owner didn't look like the girl driving the car (since it was the daughter). But then some Barney Fife detective decides to do a lookup on their address, which happened to be an apartment we live at years ago. He sees the DMV picture of my wife and decides it's her. Then sends a ticket to THEIR address and not the current one on file for my wife. We never get the ticket, and they suspend my wife's license because of it.

We finally call up the police department to straighten things out, and my wife is livid. She's telling them, "Look, it's not my car, it's not me in the picture, we weren't living at that address at the time of the picture, and you sent a court summons to the wrong address!" And after an hour of arguing with them on the phone, they finally say something like, "Well, out of the goodness of our own hearts, we'll drop the charges".

I think literally the next month the cameras were ruled unconstitutional and we haven't had to deal with them since.

This reminds me exactly of this small town in Washington State. There's a single highway from Spokane down to Pullman where Wazzu is and a few of the other highways from Seattle merge in and around Colfax, WA. For the most part, it's a 65 mph drive through some extremely boring landscape that you just want to hurry up and get through. But when you get into Colfax, they drop the speed limit down to 25 on the main street, and it feels like you're doing 10. The line up multiple cop cars and nail people constantly. It feels like they'll pull you over if you go 27.

Of course nobody can really fight the tickets because most the people that get them are college students that don't want to take the time to drive back up just to go to court. They probably pay for the entire town budget just from that. Of course with all that funding, they pave the main street to a glass-like perfect finish, make it four lanes wide, and paint the lines long and spaced apart so it feels like your crawling on the road as you go down it.

Drive through Poland, or Canfield, or Girard, or any number of other cities around the Youngstown area. There are cities that rely upon a certain, specific amount of ticket revenue.

I know Youngstown does, because several police officers who worked security told me this is the case. They would often be out, towards the end of the month, running speed traps, with one car running radar, and 2-4 cars chasing cars down.

Years ago, I got pulled over on the last day of a month, because the bulb in my license plate had burned out. I am sure the officer was looking for something else ..... and he did let me go with just a warning ..... but he left his jurisdiction, Poland Township, by more than a mile, to pull me over for a plate light.

A lot of cities rely upon a certain level of ticket revenue to pay their bills. Girard runs the cameras, and they do it for revenue. Their main road(422) is an artificially low 25 MPH 4 land road. They don't care if its a citizen of their city or not.

They write as many tickets as they want here. They set up "checkpoints" where they pull every single car over and look for reasons to write tickets.

Whenever I pass patrol cars cruising the streets, or posted up on the side of the road, or hiding behind signs, in parking lots of legitimate businesses, or sitting behind bridge embankments; I can't help but to view them as sharks/predators just looking for a reason to pull you over and then trying to find an in, a way to search the vehicle and the people within it.

They don't make me feel safe, they make me feel victimized, they make me feel as though privacy no longer exists in the USA....On Labor Day weekend, after leaving a charity event with my gf, we counted 6 patrol cruisers that we either passed on the road, or saw sitting in random lots.....this kind of presence does not make me feel safer. It makes me feel like I'm living in a police state.....

I absolutely hate it....I hate that there are ppl in this world who think that this is a good thing.....it is very, very far from a good thing....

Like we are prey?

So if they say, "Hiya, chum!" it can have two truly different meanings. I respect officers, have helped train some when I was younger, but hiding and checkpoints and the bogus stops have made me less enthused.

About 40,000 people die every year in the U.S. due to traffic accidents.

That's 109 people every day. 109 people died in car accidents today. And the day before, and the day before. And every day.

109 random people who go to bed tonight will die tomorrow in car accidents just in the U.S. And the next day and the next. And every day.

11,000+ people of all ages, races, economic status, will die randomly in car accidents before Christmas 2018.

The vast majority of these deaths are due to driver error and are avoidable.

In this entire post, there's about 1,200 letters (of the alphabet).

That's how many people in the U.S. will die in car accidents in the next 11 days.

I can't think of any better way to keeping these numbers down than traffic law enforcement.

If you know one, let's hear it.

Three people won the died in car lottery in the time it took me to type this.

Not enforcing traffic laws isn't a solution either. In Colorado Springs, traffic deaths are up 40% this year. There almost no enforcement. I was in Ohio a few weeks ago, I saw more traffic cops in a week than I've seen in Colorado all year. People drive as fast and as crazy as they want because they won't get caught.

Enforcement alone isn't the answer. Too many people just don't pay attention. Too many distractions in the cars. Need people to be responsible behind the wheel. I have no idea what the solution is.

Wow.
I try to imagine experiencing something like that in my own damned life.
If only there was some way that I could put myself in your shoes- feeling like a target every day.
I never knew what it must be like to experience 'DWD' (driving while Derden).
Thanks for helping me see things through a different lens.




Preach.
I can hear you.




What demographic do you occupy- to speak the same message, to live the same ethos, to experience the same PTSD triggers as an African-American male, aged 12-120? Because your post sounds an awful lot like the things heard every Saturday in every American barbershop that sees African-textured hair fall onto its floors.


I feel you, Dawg.


Truth: I prefer my tickets to arrive weeks later in the mail- because that 'curbside s#'... takes years off my life... every 10-15 minute encounter at a time. I've experienced at least 30-40 of them in my lifetime. (How many other law-abiding Dawgtalkers have had 30-40 streetside encounters with the police in their lifetimes?)



I like Damanshot, the OP of this thread. We've been buds for years. I like that we're the same age, share an occasional PM at this site, experienced the same cultural moments, and cheer for the same NFL team. But the very fact that he views his traffic ticket as an inconvenience and you & I view that ticket as a blessing....

...tells us how many different Americas can simultaneously exist in Real Time.


.02,
Clemdawg.

The speed limit on I-95 through NC/SC is 70 mph in most places. If you aren't going close to 80, stay to the right.

And that's in the construction zones, which are numerous. The worst thing about 95 is the RV's following the log trucks following the wide-loads hauling half-houses on two-lane sections, going uphill. The RV's keep popping into the left lane to try and pass the log trucks and wide-loads, and the people driving regular vehicles reach a higher level of crazy trying to break out of the traffic clump. Its mayhem.

I know I wouldn't want that. I was doing 117 until I hit 118 and my fuel shutoff in my Camaro. Gonna be taking that nifty little governor off this weekend.

I better NOT EVER HEAR your son was in the Cameron with u ... EVER ...

Who you think was driving

Nah, car seat is a little hard to get in the back seat. I have one in there, but his daycare is by Mom's work, so she takes and drops off.

...

No doubt. When traveling to Hilton Head in the summer, going 85-90 MPH on I-95 through SC is going with the flow of traffic.

That is the logic I follow. How much time are you going to save, especially on a city street? On a long trip, say a 8 hour drive you might shave a hour off the drive, but then on a long drive, you probably aren't on some deadline.

As you said, just leave earlier.

Actually, many times I set the cruise a few clicks under the limit. That way you arent' always in wolfpacks of cars.

I'm always driving my dad to the VA hospital in Fort Wayne which is a good 5 hours of driving there and back. We always leave early and it takes the stress out of the drive. I don't mind at all when a group of cars passes me by like I am standing still. I just laugh when I see the blue lights flash because I know it's not for me lol. I mean if your in a real hurry how late are you going to be after getting pulled over. It's just not worth it unless it's a life or death emergency.