Despite a vote of 4 to 3 to extend the city’s red light camera program, the vote failed because it required five to pass. Councilors Bonner Gaylord, Eugene Weeks and John Odom voted against extending the program. <\/p>\n
The SafeLight program allows the city to place cameras at high-accident intersections. Drivers who run red lights are caught on camera and issued a ticket through the mail. <\/p>\n
Gaylord questioned the ethics of the program, which he said \u201cgoes against what our country\u2019s justice system was founded on \u2014 innocent until proven guilty. And this seems to be to be guilty until proven innocent.\u201d Since the ticket is issued to the owner of the car, he said there is no way to prove that the owner was actually driving. <\/p>\n
Transportation Operations Manager Mike Kennon said that the ticket works like a parking ticket in that it is a civil ticket that does not result in insurance hikes or points on a person’s license. The state law allows owners to transfer the ticket to the driver of the car. <\/p>\n
Weeks said that when the program started three years ago, there was a camera at the intersection of Rock Quarry Road and Proctor Street, which has since been removed. He said when he questioned the city about the removal, he was told that it was because there was a decrease in accidents at that intersection. <\/p>\n
\u201cI thought that was part of the objective of the red light camera was to cut down accidents at intersections,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Kennon said that it is common to evaluate the intersections and move the cameras around to the high-priority areas. In the case of Rock Quarry and Proctor, Kennon said that with the installation of the camera, t-bone-type crashes that had been occurring dropped down to none. He said the department can look into the intersection again if crashes have increased. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is some cost associated with it,\u201d said City Manager Russell Allen. \u201cWe do want to put it at intersections that are productive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
City councilors voted 4 to 3 to extend the red light camera program, which places cameras at busy intersections. But, the vote failed because it needed five votes to pass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24029,"featured_media":8900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,15,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24029"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}