Red Light Cams Discussion

Map Editors Community United States Missouri
1

If you follow the Missouri Wiki, you’ll see that as of Dec 20th I cleaned out all the (unapproved) red light cams.

Now that we’ve had a while to accumulate some more reports I’d like to get some feedback on what your feelings are about how to handle all the reports.

It’s fairly obvious that there is some rampant abuse of the red light camera reporting. Either traffic control cams being flagged as red light cams, down to blatant abuse to get points / annoy people.

Keeping track of red light cams is not the full time job I was looking for. So in order to keep our wits about us here is what I propose:

  1. Obvious bogus cams get deleted immediately by editors. (“Fake Cam” reports, cams reported in the middle of residential neighborhoods, speed cams reported in a line down the freeway, etc.)

  2. If you have personal first hand knowledge of a cam, approve it.

Here’s where it get’s a little more grey…
3) If you are a level 1 editor, go ahead and approve cams that look like they could be legit, as the voting process will remove any that are bogus.

  1. if you are a level 3 or higher editor, avoid approval of cams unless they look legit and are at least 4 weeks old (IE a level 1 has not found them). Theoretically a Level 1 voting a cam “Not There” in the client can have a Level 5 approved cam gone within 5 days if they are consistent about hitting the not there button.

The only other alternative option I can think of is to simply delete new cam reports and hope and pray the MO outlaw’s these darn things like AK did. :wink:

2

FYI, bigbear had been keeping a spreadsheet of RLCs he either approved, knew were not there, were there but not mapped, etc. I converted it over to a wiki table and added it along with a placeholder for speed cameras under an Illinois page. I haven’t gotten around to cleaning it up and adding the link to the main Illinois wiki pages but you can find it here.

The nice thing is the table has places for a Permalink to the intersection and a link to a source (usually the municipality’s RLC page) for confirmation.

3

I like it. But it retains the “almost a full time job” feel. If I had more editors at my disposal / someone that wanted to maintain it, I could swing it, but as it is there are only a handful of editors in the area, and even fewer of those actually visit the forums, much less the wiki’s.

The other issue is the little municipalities that acknowledge they use the camera’s but don’t list specific locations on websites. Examples would be Hazelwood and Florissant. Both have red light camera pages, but neither list out the locations of every or in some cases any of the cameras. Those locations can be inferred in some instances by the sample videos they post and knowledge of the area. (Hazelwood webpage has a list, but it doesn’t seem to be well maintained, as a few intersections in the city are not listed, but def. have the cameras. Florissant doesn’t have a list anywhere I can find).

As far as I am aware there seems to be no requirement they publicly post the locations of the cameras.

4

So the ones listed here for Hazelwood is a partial or not up to date list: http://www.hazelwoodmo.org/images/stories/police/Red-LightSafetyProgramFAQs.pdf

I know what you mean though, some cities like Chicago, have a nice map and you can click on the camera at an intersection for the directions of enforcement. Others have an info page that says yes, we have them.

It was alot of work to make the list, but did make it easy to eliminate false ones. I would pull up my list, click on the web site link to see if anything changed on their site if the city added or removed any. It did cut down on the number of false reports I think having the proper ones approved. Some add the camera because they think it marks stop lights. Maybe take 1 day a week of editing to just do cameras.

5

I think people see the warning sign (they’re usually in all directions) and just hit the button without confirming whether or not that direction of travel actually has a camera. Then, you get people who don’t know the difference between a RLC and the other camera/sensor types adorning most controlled intersections.

I’ve tried cleaning up some of the reported but unapproved cameras in the Chicagoland area and it does get daunting when some of the same ones keep popping up as soon as you delete them. At least the table saves a little time on research especially for places that don’t have the nice interactive map Chicago does.

6

KC I have a wiki about it, and I’ll have to go review it tonight, but I used the City’s data about their lights. And I have seen abuse of the reporting feature too. A lot of the abuse has been probably because it has a traffic management camera on it that the city uses to keep an eye on incidents or even the receivers for the signals from emergency vehicles. Either way, I warned on the Wiki, that all other cameras are or will be at risk of being deleted without further action. Maybe you could instill a Wiki for Columbia/Jeff City with the same premise or the like for Ozark area. Haven’t seen one except major cities. Could create a wiki and link to KC or STL for easy ways to find it?

7

One issue for the St Louis are also is that some cities employ mobile cameras. Kinloch, St Ann, and Country Club Hills are the most infamous. I know Wellston uses one too. The location of these cameras can change day to day, and they can set the up anywhere in their jurisdiction. Charlack famously draped a mobile speed camera off the Midland Blvd bridge to point down onto the 30 feet or so of I-170 that was technically in their city limits to catch vehicles on I-170. County police has a whole fleet of cameras that they can deploy in the middle of unincorporated subdivisions. (Though normally only as controls, not to actually write tickets)
So, that leads to some transient returns on cameras.

8

Ok, for STL, I can understand so many reports. I don’t know of them using that here in KC yet. I used to live in Phoenix and I know Scottsdale and Mesa were big on the mobile speed cameras in the back of service vans. My friend got caught while I was with him, barely going over, but we were coming from some event downtown.

In those instances, I think the police report or speed trap are more fitting, maybe they could expand that to one more type, you know they have visible and hidden, to maybe one that is a mobile camera. I’ll try to pry that next week.

9

I know many people who believe that the new traffic light sensor systems, which look like video cameras, are actually red light cameras. They do not realize that true traffic cameras have warning signs to alert you to the camera system and that the cameras are not located on the light poles. As such, I just accept there will be a constant flow of false red light camera submissions from well intentioned Wazers.

10

I agree with your take on it there. There are actual cameras mounted on top of signals around Overland Park for traffic management here, but they have no law binding enforcement of violators. The ones in KC certainly do that have the notification by signs that they are red light enforced.

11

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/red-light-cameras-debated-before-missouri-appeals-court/article_a626f289-82b0-562d-b4f1-11be1dc5e6ea.html

I sure hope that the court strikes down the cameras here in MO! Not only are these things a pain in the rear for the editors, but I’ve been “victimized” by American Traffic Solutions, on 3 occasions now.

How was I a victim? My car was stolen in Feb of last year. In the 4 days the thieves went joyriding they managed to rack up at least 2 red light tickets (that I know about), one in the city and one in florissant. The car was stolen in florissant and I had the police report, but they still made me go down to the florissant court and show them the copy of what they already had. On top of that the court police officer hassled me over it! To add insult to injury, the video of the violation showed that a florissant police cruiser was 4 seconds (I used a stopwatch) behind my stolen car, but because the flash went off I guess the cop thought “well the cam got him” and DID NOT pull them over. Had they bothered to care, they might have caught 2 car thieves right then, instead my car was wrecked and totaled by the scum 2 days later.

The City of St. Louis ticket was almost worse to deal with… I returned the bottom portion of the “ticket” with the information that the car was stolen and I included a copy of the police report. A few days latter I got a summons in the mail! Again I returned the papers with another copy of the police report (good thing I have one of those printers with a copy function!), and a few days later I get a 2nd notice of summons. Finally 2 days before the court date (mind you this was going on for 2 months of me calling), I finally stopped trying to call the court clerks office and I called the Public Relations number for the city police department. I told the officer, “Look, here’s the situation, I’ve called X number of times in X number of days, (I have a log written of that), is there anyone who will listen to me BEFORE I have to loose a day’s pay and tell a Judge that you’re all a bunch of morons!”

About 2 hours later I got a call from a court clerk saying that they had (finally) taken care of it.

I think I’m going to find that lawyers contact info from the news story and send him my story.

Finally, ATS, has a habit of screwing up I found out. I got a red light ticket for a car that I traded into a dealer 4 years ago. It has a new owner(s), new license plates (not registered to me) and is in no way linked to me anymore, yet somehow ATS managed to send me this ticket anyway. I called the MO Dept of Revenue and verified that the plate was NOT registered to me. So I tried calling ATS’s customer service number on the ticket, WHAT A JOKE! The morons there tried to make me pay the ticket!!! I hung up and I called the City Police Dept (again). This time I told them that I considered it criminal and that I wanted to talk to someone and file a formal complaint against ATS. They, of course, didn’t like that one bit and flat out refused. However I was put through to the voicemail of the officer who “reviews the video’s and clicks the buttons”. I told him the story on the voicemail and I added that if I didn’t hear something back that I was going to retain legal counsel and explore my options for talking to the media.

I had a call back within 30 min telling me the ticket was “taken care of”… I highly doubt they’ve done anything to ATS about it.

12

Just noticed over the weekend that the newer cameras on Forest Park Parkway are now mounted on the traffic light poles. I was confused when I saw the warning signs, but no separately mounted cameras, then my wife pointed them out above the traffic lights themselves. They are noticeably larger than the traffic monitoring cameras.

13

If you get a chance to stop and get a picture of it, I would love to see that style. Also to add to the camera section of the Wiki.

14

Those are not cameras, although they very much look like them. A real red light camera is going to be mounted away from the intersection, in a box with a powerful flash. It needs a point of view that lets it frame the vehicle with the violated red light in the same shot. What you see are motion detectors that may or may not be integrated into how the light times its cycle. I have a very similar problem in Houston, where many people are spotting those detectors and erroneously flagging them as cameras.

15

You mean cameras like these, right?
https://maps.google.com/?ll=38.646456,-90.301158&spn=0.014999,0.033023&t=m&layer=c&cbll=38.646056,-90.301215&panoid=sbrZBzb6C5UsXdQwjr10hA&cbp=12,349.41,,0,4.45&z=16

That is what I expect to see at an intersection with a photo enforcement warning, but this intersection is now posted, and I do not see any of the box cameras.

(Here is street view prior to the cameras being installed. https://maps.google.com/?ll=38.649288,-90.300922&spn=0.014998,0.033023&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=38.649269,-90.300774&panoid=f8MtSzlppYSwHcWW-EMPRw&cbp=12,6.9,,0,11.23)

I saw 4 different devices I think. There are the little sensors above the traffic lights themselves. Then there are video camera balls mounted off buildings or street lights at each corner (you can see one at kayak coffee and one off the northwest corner street light); I happen to know these are police controlled PTZ cameras. There are the sensor cameras mounted above the light poles (two in this picture). And then there are now these larger cameras (nearly the sign of the box cameras you are talking about) mounted above the traffic lights. These intersections are a little odd in that the lights are mounted only across the intersection facing traffic, not on the near side of the intersection away from traffic. So, it looks like the cameras above the light actually capture opposite direction traffic.

Either way, this section is now clearly marked as photo enforced. I drive by 1-2 times a week (but this week is spring break) and cannot find anything other than these pole mounted cameras.

16

I wonder if this could be an attempt at capturing an image of the driver? St. Louis’s red light law was famously dealt a blow when a Judge said it was invalid because it criminally goes after the owner of the vehicle, not necessarily the driver. Other Red Light laws were upheld because they were treated as a parking ticket (ticketing the car not the driver).

In any case, for the purposes of Waze, I think if the intersection is posted and signed that it’s red light enforced, that’s good reason to have them on the map, especially since “fake” cameras are not used here.

As someone who lives in the area, I’m very curious to know what they are doing with my tax money this time. :wink:

17

I think I have solved the weird camera issue…
There’s no cameras!
There are signs posted for all four directions, but cameras on only two directions. Those cameras cover only the cross streets were set back in a way that I could not readily see them from Forest Park Parkway at all. Meanwhile, there looks to be no cameras at all on Forest Park Parkway even though the signs are there.

18

sneaky … :shock: