Chicago grifts drivers with shorter yellow lights

The Chicago Tribune released findings from their ongoing investigation into the city’s red-light camera program on Thursday, revealing that with the city’s transition to a new camera vendor came a “subtle but significant lowering of the threshold for yellow light times.” The new vendor, Xerox State & Local Solutions, took over the program in 2013...

The Chicago Tribune released findings from their ongoing investigation into the city’s red-light camera program on Thursday, revealing that with the city’s transition to a new camera vendor came a “subtle but significant lowering of the threshold for yellow light times.”

The new vendor, Xerox State & Local Solutions, took over the program in 2013 after Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. was alleged to have paid $2 million in bribes to city transportation official John Bills.

But it seems as though Chicago has simply traded one suspect vendor for another, as disputed tickets issued by the Xerox cameras are 50 times more likely than those issued by Redflex to have resulted from a yellow light shorter than the three-second legal minimum, according to the Tribune.

Erroneous ticketing has been a massive problem for Chicago’s red-light camera program, but officials have yet to offer answers regarding the causes.

Since 2003, more than 350 red-light cameras in Chicago have levied nearly half a billion dollars in fines.

While immensely profitable, the city’s red-light camera program has conferred no discernable public safety benefit, has been mired in scandal and is essentially stealing from lawful drivers.

It should be discontinued.

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