Are Traffic Cameras Ethical?

You’re in a rush to get to the movie and then of course with your luck, the light turns yellow. You accelerate to make it through the light before it gets red, but then flash! You’ve been caught blowing a red light by the slightest of margins by the newly installed traffic camera. Now you can expect a hefty fine to be sent to you through the mail as well as a picture and possibly video of you just trying to make the movie on time. Is this fair? Or even is this necessary?

In the recent years, over 3,000 new traffic cameras have been installed at our intersections and on our highways. These cameras can do anything from issuing speeding tickets to scanning license plates and seeing if that car has any unpaid fines. The one thing that every camera has in common is the blatant fact that they produce revenue.

The companies that produce these cameras claim that these cameras are making streets and highways safer. If monitored at all times, people won’t blow red lights and definitely won’t take a chance hitting dangerous speeds on high ways. In New York City, a plan is in the works to install traffic cameras to make the city’s bus system more efficient. The main reason for the installation of these cameras, and also the most controversial reason is that the cameras produce revenue for the companies and for the government.

For people who drive the streets that are monitored by traffic cameras, the tickets are piling up. A camera was recently installed at an intersection in Schaumburg, Illinois and produced around 1 million dollars in fines in only 3 months. Throughout the entire US, traffic cameras have given out 200,000 violations since September. To the people, traffic cameras are just another way that they are being cheated out of their own, hard earned money.

I think traffic cameras are a violation of privacy. Whatever happened to human judgment? We should be given tickets and given fines when found committing a violation by a human police officer. Humans have the ability to think before handing out fines, unlike a machine. If we are going to have machines patrol our streets then why not have machines patrol out entire police force as well? Traffic cameras can’t think and can’t assess situations and therefore should not be patrolling our streets.

Overall, I feel that the police have been doing a fine job on our streets and that traffic cameras are used solely as a source of revenue. These cameras are produced and operated by for-profit companies that don’t worry about how many violations they give out. Each camera that is put on the street makes these companies approximately 5,000 dollars every month! According to the Journal of Law and Economics, during economic hardships, the number of violations assessed goes way up as revenue is the only goal. Some cities, even a major city such as Dallas have been caught shortening the time that a stoplight is at yellow in order to try and catch more people running red lights. I think that the entire idea of giving more tickets to create more revenue is unethical and the main source of these tickets are the cameras that are being installed in our neighborhoods every day.