Tempe police are trying to reduce collisions by stepping up enforcement at the top 10 intersections for crashes.
Police will station officers at the intersections on four days, boosting visibility and looking for violations like speeding or running red lights. The city will have five extra officers on patrol from noon to 8 p.m., which is when most collisions occur, Lt. Steve Anderson said.
"This is above and beyond our normal patrols that we do every day," he said.
The campaign began Friday, Feb. 17 and continues on Monday, Feb. 20; Friday, Feb. 24; and Monday, Feb. 27. The extra patrols are funded through a grant from the Governor's Office of Highway Safety, which is providing overtime for the officers.
The extra enforcement occurs throughout the year and is not a result of Tempe ending photo radar in July, Anderson said.
In fact, collisions have dropped slightly at the seven intersections where cameras were equipped to detect red-light and speed-on-green violations.
Collisions at those intersections fell from 101 to 93, when comparing July 18, 2011, to Jan. 18, 2012, to the same six-month period from a year earlier.
Crashes went up only at the Rural Road and University Drive intersection. Collisions stayed the same at one other and fell at the remaining five.
Tempe cancelled its photo radar contract with Redflex Traffic Systems after the vendor sued the city in a fee dispute. Redflex claimed Tempe should have paid an additional $1.3 million over the prior three years, which Tempe disputes. Already, Tempe was losing about $15,000 a year on photo radar after paying Redflex's fees and staffing costs.
Tempe has had photo radar since 1996, and Redflex's cameras had been in place since 2007. Collision statistics show the number of crashes near photo radar intersections had fallen the first three years of the contract, then leveled off.
The cameras were placed at intersections with a history of crashes.
For the current enforcement campaign, police will patrol the most problematic intersections in the past six months. They are:
• Southern Avenue and Rural Road
• Rural Road and University Drive
• 5000 S. Arizona Mills Circle
• Broadway Road and Rural Road
• Baseline Road and Interstate 10
• Mill Avenue and Southern Avenue
• McClintock Drive and Baseline Road
• Broadway Road and McClintock Drive
• Priest Drive and Elliot Road
• Guadalupe Road and McClintock Drive
Contact writer: (480) 898-6548 or ggroff@evtrib.com
mikea12012 posted at 12:03 am on Sun, Feb 19, 2012.
The speed and red light cameras are an excellent idea, but the fines need to be increased, taking lots of money from bad drivers is a certain way to make them think twice. Hope the cities and counties get the fee sharing wrinkles worked out and start those big fat tickets coming to peoples mailboxes again soon.
Juggernaut8000 posted at 5:49 am on Sun, Feb 19, 2012.
Speed and red light cameras are merely ATM machines for the cities. People don't intentionally run red lights they are just not paying attention in most cases. The only way to deter red light running is when the offender meets a cement truck midway through the intersection, not a ticket in the mail that they will avoid anyways.
Just so people know, don't answer the door for a process server and try to cover your face if you think you may be in front of a speed camera.
bfera posted at 10:06 am on Sun, Feb 19, 2012.
The "ATM" idea is an interesting one, but many arguments have been made that it might not be true (note: that doesn't necessarily mean that wasn't the hope/intent by the cities/municipalities involved).
This is an old Tribune story (2005), but it details how:
"...everybody else involved does just fine. The state cashes in. Private vendors and process servers cash in. And insurance companies and defensive driving schools cash in.But the six photo safety programs in the East Valley and Phoenix drained city coffers..."
http://evtnow.com/2db
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Edited by staff.
Hayburner posted at 4:14 pm on Mon, Feb 20, 2012.
The cameras (indirectly) block emergency vehicles - because cars stopped at a camera hesitate to get out of the way! Other side effects: Rearenders, local $$$ sent to Oz or Goldman-Sachs, where it won't come back, and tourists and shoppers driven away.
Worse, a false expectation of safety, because cameras can't stop the guys who cause the accidents, the real late runners. (If cameras worked, camera sellers wouldn't have the crash videos they supply to the media.)
Want safety, no side effects?
To cut car/pedestrian accidents, train your kids (and yourself) not to step out just 'cuz the walk sign came on.
To cut nuisance running (a fraction of a second late), lengthen the yellows. It's cheap to do so can be done all over town.
The reason the dangerous real late (multiple seconds) runs can't be stopped by the mere presence of a camera is because the runner won't know (a tourist) or won't remember (a distracted or impaired "local") that there's a camera up ahead. They're not doing it on purpose! To cut these real late runs, improve the visual cues that say, "Intersection ahead." Florida's DOT found that better pavement markings (paint!) cut running by up to 74%. Make the signal lights bigger, add backboards, and put the poles on the NEAR side of the corner. Put brighter bulbs in the street lights at intersections. Put up lighted name signs for the cross streets.
Who needs cameras and their side effects?