Opponents of the cameras often argue that they are really just revenue engines for struggling cities and towns, silently dinging motorists for mostly minor infractions. And while guidelines issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration say revenue is an invalid justification for the use of the eyes in the sky (see box at right), camera-generated citations do spin off a lot of money in many cities — the nearly 400 cameras in Chicago, for example, generated more than $64 million in 2009, the last year for which complete figures were available.
Los Angeles hasn't been so lucky.
The city gets only a third of the revenue generated by camera citations, many of which go unpaid anyway because judges refuse to enforce them, the city controller's office reported last year. It found in an audit that if you add it all up, operating the cameras has cost $1 million to $1.5 million a year more than they've generated in fines, even as "the program has not been able to document conclusively an increase in public safety."
Another common refrain from critics is that the devices replace a human officer's judgment and discretion with the cold, unforgiving algorithms of a machine.''....
Beeber, of Safer Streets LA, agreed that "as more people get tickets, they start getting mad about it," saying: "You start doing that year after year after year and you start generating enough anger in the populace and it gets to the tipping point."
[Read on at above link.]
Important issues about traffic regulations altogether is discussed here:
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