OPINION:
Some drivers in Fairfax County, Virginia, were shocked recently to open their mailbox and find notices accusing them of going a whopping 36 mph in a 35 mph zone.
The tickets were issued by robotic cameras set up to prey on traffic passing in front of several schools. The policymakers who came up with the idea swore the cameras would go after flagrant offenders only. As so often happens with government, however, what’s initially promised is not what you end up getting.
Conduent, the contractor that runs every aspect of the program, is supposed to operate the speed cameras only when children are nearby. In July, however, the cameras recorded drivers when school zone warning lights were not flashing. Instead of blaming the vendor for failing to ensure that the speed trap was in full compliance with Virginia law, the Fairfax County Police Department blamed the “Winko-Matic” lights for failing to activate when a summer school session was in progress.
That was a bad start for a scheme Fairfax County supervisors keep saying is only a “pilot program” — as if it intends to carefully consider the results of the experiment before making a decision about whether to continue. That’s a lie.
Fairfax County’s cameras are under contract to issue tickets through 2027, with options to extend for several more years. Under the lucrative deal signed in December, the county cannot take away any cameras, even after they prove ineffective from a public safety perspective, under a clause that states that “the County will not reduce the requested number of systems or deployment thereof during the term of the contract.”
The county is already plotting with the vendor to add 50 cameras next year, and an additional 30 in 2025. Fairfax County was in such a rush to start collecting the loot that it didn’t bother using normal bidding procedures.
Instead, the photo ticketing contract piggybacks on the arrangement in Montgomery County, Maryland, bringing with it all the baggage that comes with copying a program that has also been caught falsely accusing people of speeding.
In one revealing instance in Montgomery County, the radar beam from a speed camera reflected off a school bus onto cars in the opposite traffic lane, shifting the signal and resulting in an erroneous speed reading.
“This is a known possibility and we should have caught it in processing,” an employee of Xerox, Conduent’s predecessor company, wrote in an email at the time.
It goes without saying that problems should be caught in processing, but they aren’t, because neither the vendors nor county agencies face any consequence for making false allegations. Instead, it’s up to the citizen to recognize the mistake and mount an uphill battle against city hall to get a bogus ticket dismissed. For most, it isn’t worth the time, considering how the legal deck is stacked against them.
By shifting the burden of proof and ignoring the presumption of innocence, photo radar systems mock the core principles of our legal system so that greedy local officials can have more of the public’s money to spend on wasteful projects.
Restoring respect for the Constitution starts at the local and state level, which is why the Virginia General Assembly should revoke the authorization it gave for this error-prone, money-raising swindle.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.