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Last week, Daniel Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer publicized the story of a local driver who was unjustly ticketed:

Mike Kochkodin didn’t think his car blew the traffic signal on Roosevelt Boulevard. But a few days after the white light flashed, a 0 ticket arrived by mail at his Central Pennsylvania home.

[...]

When the notice from the Philadelphia Parking Authority came, it gave instructions on how to view the three photos taken of the car: as it approached the intersection, midway through, then afterward as the rear license plate was visible.

The lawyer son, who’d gone to Penn and is also called Mike, noticed some small numbers displayed atop the photographs. He wasn’t sure what they meant, so he read some of the fine print on the red-light program’s Web site.

It described how when lights turn red at 10 intersections on the boulevard, sensors in the pavement trigger overhead cameras. But drivers are given a grace period. The cameras are supposed to wait one-third of a second before snapping.

Which made the younger Kochkodin wonder what the “0.2″ meant in the first photo. He drove to the camera program’s office on Grant Avenue in the Northeast, and there he learned that the number meant the camera had snapped at 0.2 seconds, instead of at 0.33 seconds.

He scheduled a hearing. That took place Sept. 10 and didn’t last long. Case dismissed.

The elder Mike Kochkodin – “I never trusted these cameras from day one,” he says — asked the hearing officer what would happen to others who got caught by a too-quick camera. The officer, Kochkodin said, said he’d toss any others he saw.

Which leads to the question: Just how many people got snapped too soon?

As TheNewspaper.com reports, at least 4390 people did:

A total of 4390 red light camera tickets, worth 9,000, will be refunded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after a ticket challenge revealed that they were improperly issued. The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper uncovered the error while investigating the case of Mike Kochkodin, 59, who received a ticket on March 17 for allegedly entering an intersection two-tenths of a second after the light turned red. Last month, a Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA) adjudicator summarily dismissed Kochkodin’s case, noting that the city had promised not to take photos until a third of a second had elapsed. After an article appeared on Thursday, PPA decided to refund the tickets.

“We did not know the magnitude of the problem, nor did the contractor report it,” PPA Executive Director Vince Fenerty told the Inquirer. “Should we have looked further? Most definitely. We didn’t.”

If you get a red-light camera ticket, make sure the city is following its own rules relating to the length of the grace period.

Short Red-Light Camera Grace Period Leads To Ticket Refunds

Further Reading:

• How A Red Light Camera Ticket Can Damage Your Credit Without You Knowing It
• Forget Due Process. We’ll Just Wing It.
• Florida Cities Exploit Legal Loophole For Financial Gain
• Why The Insurance Industry Loves Red-Light Cameras
• Can Missouri Red-Light Camera Tickets Be Thrown Away?

By Eric Peters, Automotive Columnist

For years I have been arguing that the most objective — and perhaps, definitive — measure of a driver’s ability to drive safely is whether he or she has been involved in an at-fault accident.

Speeding tickets, for example, don’t really tell us whether a person is a safe/competent driver. They just tell us that person was caught driving faster than a number posted on a sign — which may be illegal, but by no means necessarily unsafe.

For example, it’s today perfectly legal to drive 65 or 70 mph on most highways. But during the “Drive 55″ era, such speeds were illegal. Did it suddenly become safe to drive at 65 or 70 on those same roads? Of course not. The law changed, that’s all.

Also: Skill varies. Some drivers are perfectly able to handle a car at 80 or 90 mph as well or better than some drivers can handle the same car at 60 mph. But the system considers the former as an “unsafe driver” simply by dint of his faster driving.

The point being, faster drivers aren’t necessarily unsafe drivers.

Insurance industry stats bear this out, incidentally. Faster drivers actually tend to have fewer accidents than slow-pokes. Also, while it’s true that driving faster can increase the amount of damage/severity of injury if there’s a crash, it does not follow that the risk of having a crash increases simply because “x” is traveling faster than “y.”

Unfortunately, our dumbed down speed limits force everyone to drive at the level of the least competent. We also do nothing meaningful to deal with those marginal/iffy drivers. They can have multiple at-fault accidents — and their license will be in less peril than the driver who has never had an at-fault accident but who has a couple “reckless driving” tickets — which in many states are issued as a matter of course for merely driving faster than 20 mph over the posted limit. (During the “Drive 55″ era, one could get a “reckless driving” cite for doing 76 mph on the freeway. Today the exact same speed is either legal — or a minor ticket.)

It’s nonsense.

Rather than fixate on all these “technical fouls” such as driving faster than a number posted on a sign, why not focus on those drivers who have actually given definitive proof their judgment or skill (or both) is lacking? Driving 80-something mph in a modern car on a modern Interstate highway is only “reckless” in the BS language of  the insurance cartels and state/local authorities who make money on this scam.

However, if a driver blows through a red light and strikes another vehicle that had the right of way, that is incontrovertible evidence of “reckless driving.”

Yet our system focus to an overbearing extent on statutory “speeding” enforcement, with driving faster than a number on a sign the main thing the safety lobby drones on about endlessly about — and the primary offense traffic cops spend their time dealing with.

Objectively dangerous conduct behind the wheel — the driver who wanders across the double yellow while gabbling away on her cell; the guy riding inches off the bumper of the car ahead of him — is routinely ignored by traffic cops.

Until it causes an accident.

And even then, the consequences are generally less serious than they would be if the driver had been nabbed for doing 80-something — even if no metal was crunched and no one was hurt. A minor ticket might be issued as a result of one car plowing into the rear end of another that was stopped at a light. It is by no means certain. But have the misfortune to drive by a radar trap and it’s a sure bet you’ll be going home with a piece of payin’ paper in your pocket.

Are the roads any safer as a result? Or have the coffers of the state just gotten a little fatter?

The sensible alternative ought to be this:

Whenever a driver is involved in an at-fault accident, he should be issued a ticket for unsafe driving (specifics to be defined based on the particulars of each case) and required to undergo a DMV evaluation that includes a re-test of basic skills and knowledge. And that means real test — not the sad little pro forma drill they do in most states today. In other words, a test that is actually possible to fail — and which requires the person to demonstrate higher than Forrest Gumpian levels of knowledge and skill. An actual road test on actual roads should be part of the deal, too — along with a physical check-up of vision and so on.

I’m not talking race car driver skill levels — or insisting upon visual acuity good enough to make it as an airline pilot. But enough skill — and good enough vision — to be a competent driver and less of a risk to others out there, as well as oneself.

We need to weed out the barely marginal (and sub-marginal) drivers out there; often, these are people who never speed — and so fly under the radar.

Until they cause an accident, of course. At that point, red flags should be hoisted.

If a driver who has already been involved in one at-fault accident has another at-fault accident within a 5 year period, their driving privileges should be suspended until they have taken and passed (at their expense) a comprehensive driver training course that intensively focuses on basic skills/competence.

If they cannot pass, they cannot drive.

A third at fault accident in any five year period should result in permanent revocation of driving privileges for at least five years.

Some people should just take the bus.

But it’ll never happen because of the money and power derived from the current system — and because this country is afflicted with an entitlement mentality and poisoned by the notion that everyone’s “equal.”

Which of course, they’re not.

Comments?
www.ericpetersautos.com

How To Objectively Identify Unsafe Drivers

Further Reading:

• The Old Man In The Buick — And The Return Of Drive 55?
• Should The Driving Age Be Raised To 18?
• Traffic Tickets Are Big Business
• Why Does Car Insurance Cost So Much?
• No More Fines: A Traffic Safety Revolution

After a lengthy development process, we’ve launched our completely redesigned Speed Trap Exchange Website (www.speedtrap.org), a popular listing of known speed traps across the United States.

Speedtrap.org is the oldest active website on the Internet devoted to exposing unethical law enforcement practices. Over the past decade the website has helped countless drivers avoid unjust tickets by leveraging its extensive database of speed trap listings. And now, after an extensive redesign of the website, the Speed Trap Exchange is even more driver-friendly.

Along with a whole new “look”, the Speed Trap Exchange will include a geographical mapping feature that will allow users to pinpoint the exact location of a speed trap, as well as aid travelers in identifying the location of speed traps on the route they intend to take to their destination.

The new website will continue to offer the opportunity to describe and discuss specific speed traps, as well as rate the quality of the listing. These discussions are often even more enlightening than the speed trap listings itself and the new speed trap rating system will allow drivers to quickly identify the most egregious speed traps.

While some communities and enforcement agencies object to being included in the Speed Trap Exchange, it’s important to note that the Speed Trap Exchange was not created to condone reckless or irresponsible driving. The National Motorists Association has long opposed the use of traffic enforcement for the purpose of revenue generation, of which speed traps are the most flagrant example.

The new NMA Speed Trap Exchange website is completely free, easy-to-use, and has proven itself to be very useful for anyone who spends time on the road. You are encouraged to view the listings in your area and add any speed traps that may be missing.

To see what everyone is talking about, check out www.speedtrap.org.

Brand New Speed Trap Exchange Website Launched!

Further Reading:

• The Worst Speed Trap Cities In The United States
• 7 Ways To Shut Down A Speed Trap
• The Traveling Public Can Go Elsewhere
• Have Your Say: NMA Forums Launched
• Why Don’t Politicians Care About Transportation Issues?

By Eric Peters, Automotive Columnist

Is 16 too young to drive?

If you’re 16. you probably think not. But it’s those over 16 — adults like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s Adrian Lund — who will get to be the deeeeciders on this one. Lund and some others want to push the age at which a person can get their first driver’s license to 17 or even 18.

Of course, it’s all about “safety.”

Lund — a professional nag who heads an organization of nags — says that teenage drivers are a menace to themselves and others and wants to use the billy stick of the federal government (via withheld highway funds) to compel states to raise their legal driving age — just as the billy stick of federal money was used to impose the 55 mph speed limit, virtual Prohibition of alcohol and “primary enforcement” seat belt laws.

This time, it’s not merely “for the children” — it actually involves them.

And Lund is partially right. Teenagers do get into more than their fair share of wrecks. But is this due to their age — or their lack of training/experience?

There are some very young pro drivers — from NHRA to NASCAR. Maybe not sixteen-year-olds, but not far removed. At 15 or 16, some of these kids are better drivers than most of us will ever be. What to make of this fact?

Granted, these are exceptional kids — but the point’s not invalid: Experience and training probably mean a whole lot more than age — as such.

Will raising the age to 17 or 18 give a kid more experience — or less? Maybe the age at which we begin to train kids to drive should be lowered, not raised. Does it make more — or less — sense to toss a kid with zero hours behind the wheel a set of car keys at 17 or 18, when he is inches way from being legally free of any parental oversight whatsoever?

Maybe it would make more sense to begin teaching kids how to drive around 14 or 15 — easing them into it gradually, and with supervision — so that by the time they are 17 or 18 they have three or four years of experience behind them. That’s actually the way it used to be done, until public institutions such as public schools took over from parents and the whole process became bureaucratized and officialized — but with less than stellar results.

Driving is, after all, a skill like any other; it is not mastered overnight — or after a few weeks of classroom instruction and a couple of hours in the seat.

Logic says start them sooner, not later.

But that would make sense — and making sense is what IIHS is not all about. It exists to harp over problems often directly ginned up by its own propaganda. Mandatory buckle-up laws are an example of this. Ditto the neo-Prohibitionist crusade that has gone way beyond a legitimate effort to deal with drunk drivers that now mercilessly prosecutes people with trace amounts of alcohol in their system — as little as .06 or even .04 BAC, the level an average person can reach after having had a single glass of wine over dinner.

But I digress.

The other half of the equation when it comes to new/teenage drivers is proper instruction. What we do in this country — for the most part — is woefully inadequate. Many parents set poor examples — or are simply ill-equipped to properly instruct their kids in safe/competent driving. Ditto the so-called “schools” (especially those offered by the public schools) and the at-best cursory testing done by most DMVs before that first license is issued.

We don’t really show kids how to drive — especially how to handle emergency, such as a slide on black ice. Instead, we chant cant at them that’s obvious BS, such as “speed kills” — the driving equivalent of the BS about “marihuana” that’s peddled to them in Just Say No sessions. Kids are smart enough to see through this — but immature enough to then regard everything they’re taught by adults as BS.

This is dangerous.

Far better to really teach them — and to be honest with them.

I’d be ready to lay serious cash on the table to bet Lund that if you took an average 14 or 15 year old and had him or her trained by an expert instructor and properly supervised for a year or two before a provisional license was granted — after which the kid would still be monitored and quickly reined in at the first sign of reckless or incompetent behavior — the whole “teenage driver” thing would just disappear.

Problem is, there’s no money in that. Finding solutions to problems is not what IIS wants. IIHS wants crusades that never end. Just like MADD; just like politicians.

Just like the whole lot of them.

Comments?
www.ericpetersautos.com

Image Credit

Should The Driving Age Be Raised To 18?

Further Reading:

• How To Objectively Identify Unsafe Drivers
• Traffic Tickets Are Big Business
• Why Does Car Insurance Cost So Much?
• More Silly Numbers From AAA
• Why The Insurance Industry Loves Red-Light Cameras