By JAMES PINKERTON

HOUSTON CHRONICLE

In the five months after Houston voters forced city officials to turn off a camera surveillance system that fined motorists for running red lights, traffic accidents at those 50 intersections with 70 cameras have decreased 16 percent, according to recently released data.

The drop in accidents surprised Houston police administrators who say a possible explanation is the unusually dry weather during recent months has made driving conditions safer. They also wonder if years of electronic monitoring have made Houstonians better, if not more cautious, drivers.

Assistant Chief Brian Lumpkin said he had assumed accidents at those intersections were increasing since HPD is still receiving raw data from the camera vendor indicating motorists were running lights with much greater frequency at many intersections. The HPD records show accidents decreased at 32 intersections, increased at 21 and stayed the same at 17.

See details for 70 cameras at the 50 intersections

“It’s too soon to really tell. I think we’ll get a better idea of what’s going on in another year,” Lumpkin said. “But we also have to remember we’ve had some really great weather, and anybody who rides patrol on a regular basis knows as soon as that rain hits, the wrecks start to happen.”

While HPD officials called the accident data a “valuable snapshot” for traffic enforcement purposes, it did not break down the severity of the accidents or the number of fatalities, if any.

The city’s red-light vendor, American Traffic Solutions, continues to provide HPD information from its surveillance system, which indicates some intersections have experienced dramatic increases in red-light violations.

“For the years the cameras were in operation violations were declining, that was a sure sign driver behavior was changing,” said ATS vice president Charles Territo. “But since the cameras have been taken down, or turned off, and since that’s been so highly publicized, behavior has changed in the opposite direction. And Houston drivers are running more red lights than ever before.”

A $10 million hit

On Nov. 14, soon after a referendum to shut down the system passed, the city stopped issuing violations but was ordered by the courts to keep the cameras and road sensors up. HPD took an immediate $10 million hit from the department’s anticipated share of ticket revenue for the remainder of this fiscal year, as the city ended a lucrative system that issued nearly 800,000 tickets and collected almost $44 million in fines since going online in September 2006.

Paul Kubosh, a local traffic attorney who helped organize the anti-camera referendum, said HPD’s traffic figures bolster his and other opponents’ claims the camera system doesn’t improve traffic safety.

“This is just further testament to what all the other studies have shown,” Kubosh said. “The variable, the main change to the intersection, is the camera, and when you take the camera out, the accidents go down.”

The city of Houston filed suit against ATS on Nov. 15 to end its contract with the firm, which runs until 2014. The judge ordered the cameras to stay in place while the lawsuit is litigated.

Rice University political science professor Robert Stein, who studied the effectiveness of the city’s red-light system on traffic safety, said the drop in accidents didn’t surprise him. Stein said the findings mirror a nationwide downturn in accidents as people drive less because of an ailing economy and rising fuel costs.

“What we’ve seen since about 2008 when the recession kicked in was a big decline in collisions, but to isolate the effect of the cameras you’d have to do a little more analysis,” Stein said.

ATS officials say that since HPD quit issuing citations last November, their sensors have been recording motorists running red lights at higher rates than before. ATS data indicates at the eight Houston intersections with the greatest number of violations, red-light running was up 36 percent to as much as 190 percent.

Unfair comparisons?

When the cameras were operational, HPD officers screening the camera feeds rejected 40 percent of the proposed violations. The current ATS data has not been screened or vetted by law enforcement, ATS officials cautioned.

For example, after citations were halted, some 6,100 violations were detected at the Southwest Freeway and Fountainview intersection from December to April. That figure represents a 195 percent increase during the same period in 2009-10.

Territo said it’s not fair to compare HPD’s crash data during the five months before and after the city quit issuing citations, noting it compares different times of year and differences in seasonal driving habits. Since November, HPD has tracked accident data at 26 of the 50 locations with the cameras and asked officers to monitor intersections during peak hours, Lumpkin said. It has even parked empty police cruisers to get motorists to obey traffic signals.

“I do think red-light cameras are a good thing for our city and a valuable tool that we lost,” Lumpkin said. “I would prefer not to have officers monitor these intersections if they can be monitored by a camera. I’d rather give them other duties.”

Not convinced

Gary Blankinship, president of the Houston Police Officer’s Union, remains convinced red-light cameras not only reduce traffic violations but save lives.

“The data clearly shows when you put those enforcement cameras in, it reduces the number of people who run red lights,” Blankinship said, referring to traffic studies. “My fear is that you’ll see the number of serious bodily injuries and fatalities from side-impact accidents increase.”









Source: Houston Police Department

james.pinkerton@chron.com