#Traffic

A police officer has no right to pursue a minor traffic stop into a home, according to a ruling handed down Wednesday by the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. A three-judge panel considered what happened after police in Sulphur, Oklahoma saw a suspect allegedly driving with faulty taillights on July 23, 2007.

The arrest of 13 young supercar drivers near Vancouver, British Columbia is not necessarily the sort of piece I’d jump all over right away, but it did inspire quite a number of emails from readers tipping us to the story. I’m always intrigued by stories that inspire a lot of tips, but after reading the Vancouver Sun follow-up, I was even more disappointed with the story. To wit:

The drivers face charges of driving without due consideration for others, which comes with a $196 ticket and six driver penalty points, which will trigger a $300 penalty point premium.

Gaumont said there is a lot of disappointment that the drivers face only $196 fines, but there is not enough evidence to charge them with the more serious offence of dangerous driving.

“We don’t have police officers who observed the offence, and we don’t have lasers and radars that have the speeds,” Gaumont said. “We have to really depend on third-party individuals who had called in.”

If I’ve got this right, we’re supposed to be outraged by young people in fast cars, and society’s inability to stop them from wreaking their “speeds upwards of 200 km/h” terror. For me, though, the overriding reaction to this story is “how uncool doess this make the supercars look?”

Voters in at least seven cities will soon have a chance to decide whether to prohibit the use of red light cameras and speed cameras. Initiatives are being certified for the ballot in five states across the country, despite an all-out effort by photo ticketing firms to block any public role in the matter. Early voting is already underway in Albuquerque, New Mexico for the October 4 municipal election.

“Shall the Albuquerque city council continue authorizing the ‘Safe Traffic Operations Program,’ commonly called the ‘red light camera program’?” the city ballot asks.

Just because police can search an automobile does not mean they can search its driver, according to an August 15 ruling by the North Dakota Supreme Court.

As municipalities around the country increasingly have second thoughts about continuing red light camera programs, the private companies in charge of the photo ticketing are turning up the heat. Redflex Traffic Systems announced to its Australian shareholders last week that it continues to adjust contract language, boosting the penalties for cities that turn their back on photo ticketing. Just such language has hit in San Bernardino, California where rival photo ticketing firm American Traffic Solutions (ATS) is threatening to impose an extra $1,896,202 fee to punish the city council for attempting to get out of the contract in March. Officials had already approved cutting a check for $175,000 to the company as compensation.

Boston.com’s On Liberty blog reports that the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right of citizens to video police officers, ruling in part that

changes in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw. The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.

So great was this victory for First Amendment rights and the New Media, that an Albuquerque police officer celebrated by getting caught in flagrante delicto while in uniform. You know, in case there was any question as to why the courts really ruled this way. And if this whole story smacks of Jalopnik-style only-barely-related-to-cars desperation, we’ve got a “Stump the Best And Brightest” challenge to keep things car-centric: what model of vehicle is the officer “laying down the law” on?

A federal appellate court ruled Friday that the pepper spraying and beating of a black motorist who did not wear his seat belt constituted excessive force. Mark Anthony Young, 46, was driving to the gym in February 2007 when Los Angeles County, California Sheriff’s Deputy Richard Wells stopped him so he could issue a ticket for failing to buckle up. Wells’ problems began when he was unable to produce his vehicle registration.

While Wells was writing up the ticket, Young got out of his truck and walked over to hand the deputy the vehicle’s paperwork. Wells ordered Young back into his truck, but Young did not feel like doing so. He sat on the curb, eating broccoli. In his legal filing, Wells claimed the broccoli was dangerous and that he “believed that [Young] was about to throw the broccoli at [him] in order to cause a distraction before assaulting him.”

A 2000 mile road trip to drive…the 2012 Toyota Camry? Oh well. I needed a break from the world, and what better way to do it than with some quiet time and a huge tax write-off. At 5:54 A.M. I fired my ride for what turned out to be 17 hours of pure hell.

A fourth city in Orange County, California is poised to outlaw the use of red light cameras. Earlier this month the Laguna Niguel city council voted 4-1 on first reading of a measure that would prohibit the use of automated ticketing machines in the future — the city has never allowed camera vendors to operate on its streets.

Linda Lindholm and Robert Ming introduced the measure citing the “mixed reviews” the cameras have received with studies showing red light cameras increase accidents ( view studies).

The long battle over the red light camera program in Houston, Texas ended Wednesday. The city council voted 14-1 to repeal the ordinance that granted American Traffic Solutions (ATS) the right to issue automated tickets at fifty intersections throughout the country’s fourth largest city.

“This is a total victory for the voters of Houston,” Citizens Against Red Light Cameras spokesman Philip Owens told TheNewspaper. “The only shame is it took too long to get where we are. Today was more of an exercise in political theater but a win is a win.”

Opponents of red light cameras and speed cameras have had an impact on the bottom line of one of the world’s largest photo enforcement providers. Redflex Traffic Systems reported a “slowdown in the level of new contracts signed” that dragged the firm’s US traffic camera revenue down $2.4 million in the 2011 financial year. Redflex lost $1.5 million worth of US contracts this year.

Confiscating automobiles has become a significant source of revenue for cash-strapped California cities. Last Tuesday, the state legislature gave preliminary approval to legislation to impose limits on the practice.

Under current law, municipalities run sobriety checkpoints funded almost entirely by $30 million in federal grant money. The drunk-driving (DUI) roadblocks catch comparatively few drunk drivers, so officers often focus on issuing as many tickets as possible for minor violations while cars are stopped. Assembly Bill 353 separates vehicle inspection checkpoints from DUI roadblocks and prohibits impounding of vehicles unless the alleged offense meets certain criteria.

The California legislature last week sent legislation to Governor Jerry Brown (D) designed to boost the number of citations issued for for driving while talking with a cell phone in hand. The measure also increases the maximum possible fine to $528.

The city council in Tampa, Florida this month began deciding how it would spend revenue from the red light camera program expected to go online next month. Officials calculated that the automated ticketing machines would bring in an extra $2 million a year, an important amount for a city facing a $34.5 million budget deficit.

Police Chief Jane Castor had proposed to the city in March that it sign a contract with American Traffic Solutions. Castor and members of her department personally profit from any ticketing system linked to an increase in automobile insurance rates. This is so because the state imposes a tax on car insurance that is deposited as a “state contribution” in each municipality’s police pension fund. Based on city figures, the 0.85 percent tax pumped an extra $8,158,217 into Tampa police pensions from a total of $1 billion in added insurance costs paid by Tampa drivers between 1999, when the current system was imposed, and 2009.

A Whatcom County, Washington Superior Court Judge yesterday threw the book at a photo enforcement firm for interfering with the right of the public to petition their government. Judge Ira Uhrig handed down from the bench a stinging rebuke to American Traffic Solutions (ATS). Uhrig found the firm’s lawsuit to block an anti-traffic camera initiative from reaching the ballot in Bellingham violated state law, so he slapped the Arizona-based firm with a $10,000 fine and ordered it to pay the legal fees of the initiative’s sponsors.

“This was the greatest repudiation of ATS by a judge I could ever imagine happening,” initiative co-sponsor Tim Eyman told TheNewspaper. “It was huge. I’ve never seen anything like it.”