Big Brother may not be watching L.A. drivers anymore. The city Police Commission voted unanimously on June 7 against an LAPD recommendation for a new five-year, $15 million contract to continue operating the widely hated red-light cameras at 32 intersections citywide.
Jay Beeber, red-light camera foe
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The Los Angeles City Council can overturn the Police Commission with a supermajority, but on Tuesday council members Tony Cardenas and Bernard Parks instead floated a plan to pressure the commission to reverse its vote — which ends the program on July 31 — and to conduct a "safety study" while keeping the camera contract alive, on a monthly basis, for one year.
The unpopular cameras have churned out virtually unbeatable tickets to tens of thousands of Angelenos, most of whom got socked with an eye-popping $450 fine for rolling through a right turn on red — a violation that almost never results in accidents.
If the Police Commission holds firm, the slayer of the electronic Goliaths, and arguably L.A.'s newest folk hero, is a very unlikely David.
San Fernando Valley resident and sometime TV writer and producer Jay Beeber politely pestered the Police Commission and City Council with studies showing that, despite repeated claims by Los Angeles Police Department brass, red-light cameras were not a major factor in improving safety.
More than 100,000 motorists were cited by the silent sentinels over 10 years. According to the LAPD, only 1 percent of motorists won "not guilty" findings in court. Atop the $450, drivers paid traffic school fees and costly insurance hikes.
Yet an audit by City Controller Wendy Greuel revealed that the city was losing more than $1 million a year on the program.
How did an unknown Hollywood producer, whose key project was "Kisses and Caroms" in 2006, help persuade L.A. to become the biggest U.S. city to turn against red-light cameras — a decision that, if it stands, is likely to reverberate nationally?
"Jay's done a great job synthesizing his research, which we helped proof and critique," says Gary Biller, executive director of the National Motorists Association. "It's been a tireless effort on his part. He's a libertarian at heart and for him it's a fairness issue — how unfair it is to get a $450 ticket for a rolling right turn. Jay's campaign shows what a grassroots effort can do against a very large program in a very large city. He's taken on City Hall, and to this point it looks like he's won."
Beeber says he was motivated by sheer scientific curiosity rather than anger. He hasn't had a moving violation in 20 years. But in 2009, he began to apply the scientific method he learned at the University of Michigan to the data supporting the use of red-light-camera tickets.
He estimates he spent thousands of hours, and ultimately caught LAPD making dubious claims based on iffy data. One such claim was that five fatal accidents occurred at specific intersections before the red-light cameras were installed, and none occurred after. But two of the five accidents were not red light–related, he says, and a third involved a drunken driver who zipped through despite a camera there, mounted by a previous vendor. The fourth, "caused by a young distracted driver," likely would not have been prevented by a camera.
"They were suggesting the cameras were stopping fatalities," he says, "but the examples they gave would not have been stopped by a red-light camera."
Beeber wrote detailed reports on arcane issues such as the wisdom of increasing the "yellow light interval" and calmly repeated his findings during appearances on KABC and KFI radio— to strong public reaction.
Among other things, the image of "red-light runners" isn't accurate, he says. "Most people are caught in the dilemma zone: Do I stop or go through the light? In almost every case, lengthening the yellow light cuts red-light violations, as people see the light further back." Loma Linda, he says, lengthened yellow lights by one second and red-light violations dropped 92 percent.
One expert Beeber contacted, Dr. Barbara Langland-Orban of the University of South Florida, found in a 2008 study that red-light cameras increase accidents because drivers see the camera and slam on their brakes.
Langland-Orban says, "Jay has worked diligently to make himself an expert," adding dryly, "Communities would benefit from elected officials doing likewise."
Charles Territo, vice president of communications at Scottsdale, Ariz.–based American Traffic Solutions, which operates 3,000 cameras in 300 communities, will lose a $15 million contract if the Police Commission vote stands. He's dismissive of Beeber, saying, "Just because he says it, doesn't make it so."
Territo says LAPD stats show a 62 percent decrease in accidents at intersections after cameras were installed. But Beeber says, "Most of the studies that show the cameras were effective were put out by groups with a financial interest in keeping the cameras, like the Insurance Group for Highway Safety."
He says that of about 56,000 accidents studied in L.A., rolling right turns, which represent some 75 percent of the red-light camera tickets, caused only 45 crashes.
He started to realize "this was much more about revenue than safety," and redoubled his efforts after Greuel's report, which found that "the city actually incurred a net cost of more than $1.5 million in 2008 and $1 million in 2009 to operate the Photo Red Light Program."
