Yellow Light, Bright Light, Ticket!

Have you been busted by a camera at an intersection lately? Did you think that yellow was pretty short? Well, me too and so has the National Motorists Association. They've got a list of 6 cities that have been caught shortening their yellow light times for evil, evil profit.

Never mind that short yellow lights tends to INCREASE the number of violations and accidents in an intersection, which is what the red light cameras were predicated on. That crazy notion of increasing "safety". They're not increasing safety, they're filling their coffers. Why do I hate America so much? Nah, man, I hate the damned hypocritical power mad people we keep electing.

Here's the six cities that were caught:

1) Chattanooga, Tennessee
2) Dallas, Texas
3) Springfield, Missouri
4) Lubbock, Texas
5) Nashville, Tennessee
6) Union City, California

Note, these are only the ones who have been caught. The NMA assumes they're all guilty.

Follow through to the full story of each of the six. They are very interesting. For instance Union City was caught trapping motorists with a yellow signal time 1.3 seconds below the minimum established by state law. As a result, the city was forced to refund more than $1 million in red light camera fines. That's pretty nuts right there.

The part that the article leaves out is that in most circumstances thee cameras are operated by a third party company. They send the tickets out themselves and give a kickback percentage to the city (something less than 50%!). So, there's an active campaign to ignore the tickets when you get them in the mail, since they're not issued by the government and instead by a private company, so they hold no legal status.