From the beginning, the SafeLight and SafeSpeed programs in the Louisiana city of Lafayette have met with controversy and resistance. However, a newly released report shows that the programs, which began in 2007, have reduced crashes at monitored intersections and improved the city's finances.
A new contract with112 Redflex, the company that runs the program, will provide cameras at four new locations and will deploy two more speed vans by 2016.
“We believe that SafeLight and SafeSpeed, the so-called red-light cameras and speed vans, have proven their effectiveness, and monitoring four more intersections will make the city streets a little safer. Like many, we have mixed feelings about the fact that the programs are administered by a private company, which shares in the money collected from fines. But the programs would not have been possible otherwise,” said Dee Stanley, chief administrative officer for Lafayette Consolidated Government (LCG). Redflex provides technology and equipment that the city could not easily duplicate on its own, he said.
The report released by LCG's Traffic and Transportation Department compares data at monitored intersections for the three years before and the three years after traffic control devices were installed. According to the report, there has been a sixty-four per cent reduction in overall crashes at those intersections. There were 357 crashes before monitoring and only 130 since the devices were put in place.
In spite of predictions by opponents of red-light cameras that rear-end crashes would increase because motorists would brake in an attempt to stop, those types of accidents actually decreased by eighty per cent, from 142 before to twenty-six after.
Some of the money collected in fines is put back into the program, Stanley said, and the remainder helps to pay the salaries of Lafayette Police Department officers in the traffic division.
While traffic camera and speed van violations are not criminal offences, they are civil violations which can be pursued in court, and changes were recently made to the programs that will make it easier for LCG attorney Mike Hebert to do that. The plan is to target drivers who have racked up US$125 worth of SafeLight or SafeSpeed violations in the past three years.
LCG believes that, despite the initial suspicion of the programs and a 2009 attempt to rescind them, the SafeLight and SafeSpeed programs have worked the way they were intended. They have made drivers more cautious when approaching intersections and they have made the streets of the city a little safer for those who travel them.
A new contract with
“We believe that SafeLight and SafeSpeed, the so-called red-light cameras and speed vans, have proven their effectiveness, and monitoring four more intersections will make the city streets a little safer. Like many, we have mixed feelings about the fact that the programs are administered by a private company, which shares in the money collected from fines. But the programs would not have been possible otherwise,” said Dee Stanley, chief administrative officer for Lafayette Consolidated Government (LCG). Redflex provides technology and equipment that the city could not easily duplicate on its own, he said.
The report released by LCG's Traffic and Transportation Department compares data at monitored intersections for the three years before and the three years after traffic control devices were installed. According to the report, there has been a sixty-four per cent reduction in overall crashes at those intersections. There were 357 crashes before monitoring and only 130 since the devices were put in place.
In spite of predictions by opponents of red-light cameras that rear-end crashes would increase because motorists would brake in an attempt to stop, those types of accidents actually decreased by eighty per cent, from 142 before to twenty-six after.
Some of the money collected in fines is put back into the program, Stanley said, and the remainder helps to pay the salaries of Lafayette Police Department officers in the traffic division.
While traffic camera and speed van violations are not criminal offences, they are civil violations which can be pursued in court, and changes were recently made to the programs that will make it easier for LCG attorney Mike Hebert to do that. The plan is to target drivers who have racked up US$125 worth of SafeLight or SafeSpeed violations in the past three years.
LCG believes that, despite the initial suspicion of the programs and a 2009 attempt to rescind them, the SafeLight and SafeSpeed programs have worked the way they were intended. They have made drivers more cautious when approaching intersections and they have made the streets of the city a little safer for those who travel them.
