Jay Beeber, Director of Public Policy for the National Motorists Association will talk to John & Ken today at 3pm to discuss AB-645.
Sign the petition to tell legislators NO SPEED CAMERAS IN CALIFORNIA here.
What AB-645 Does
1. Creates a “pilot program” to allow the use of speed ticketing cameras in Los Angeles, San Jose, Oakland, Glendale, Long Beach, and San Francisco. The program will allow up to 125 cameras in LA. At the height of the Red Light Camera program, there were only about 30 intersections with 60 cameras in use in LA and over 60,000 tickets were issued each year.
2. There are dozens of objections to this bill. The major ones are:
a. Allows cameras to be used on streets where the speed limit is unreasonably lowered up to 12 mph below the 85th percentile speed (speed that 85% of reasonable drivers don’t exceed). This is the speed that the vast majority of drivers naturally choose based on the way the road is built. Driving at this speed is not an “unsafe speed” regardless of what the number on a sign says. Ticketing would start at 11 mph over the posted speed so drivers will be ticketed for going slower than the speed the road is built for.
b. Speed cameras don’t work against the average reasonable and safe driver just traveling the speed the road is built for and no additional safety benefit can be achieved by ticketing cameras.
c. A better alternative is speed feedback signs that tell a driver they are going too fast and need to slow down. These have been proven to be both more effective and more cost effective than speed cameras.
d. Removes many due process protections that you have with tickets issued by live police officers.