Invading an intersection near you

Yet another reason, to lookup. Have you looked up at your local intersections lately? If not then you need to, it’s likely they are installing cameras above them by now.

My exclusive street camera experience of old:

They started doing this in my old hometown, in Michigan, back around ‘98-99. We were one of the first cities in the country to receive these installations. As you’d guess, the cameras certainly did bother me, but that’s not why I went on to hate them. Up there it’s a big trend to have no right turn on red signs at many intersections. In certain busy intersections, it’s understandable, but not all of them.

I lived on the lake, we had “Lake Drive’s”, that wrapped nearly all the way around the lake. On my side, there was two ways to get out of the neighborhood… turn right or left onto the lake drive, from my street. Each path would take you entirely different ways, practically to different cities. If you turned left, you’d follow wrap around the lake for about a mile, then there was a long straight-a-way, nearly a mile long. This straight away was all thick fields and small shrub-like trees.

For many years, that lake drive would end after the approx mile at the stop sign, and you could only turn right or left. That road, that you could turn onto, was never a busy road, and still isn’t from what I could tell the last time I was there. At about the time they started hooking up the cameras, a huge subdivision went up. They made the end of my Lake Drive a four way intersection, and also installed no turn on red signs and cameras.

Note that this “lake drive” was only one of two ways out of our “neighborhood”, our side of the lake. According to the laws, they could not “guard” an entrance to a residential area. This was proven since they didn’t have a camera pointed into that new sub, yet violated considering there was only 2 ways out of our “sub”, and they had cameras mounted at that end facing our side.

Despite the clear violation, that’s not what really pissed me off. The problem was they put up the lights and the cameras, and replaced our stop sign with a no turn on red sign. It was only 25mph down that barren mile long straight-a-way. He light was no turn on red, and also had a left turn lane. I’d creep at 25 mph and have nothing to look at besides that light. It always seemed to take eons to reach it. The left turn signal would turn on for no more than 10 seconds, then turn red—the normal lane light would turn on for about 20 seconds—then turn red for about 2 minutes.

Nearly every single time I’d travel that way, I’d watch that damn light turn green, and then red usually right before I’d get to it. Then I’d have to wait, and wait, and wait. The new sub side didn’t have a no turn on red, so I’d sit there and watch them all go on about their merry way. Then, to add insult to injury, 90f the time during my 2 minute wait, 0-2 cars would actually go by.

Days of the new:

Within the last couple months, I finally started noticing them here. The first time, I was headed home from work early around 1PM, and actually drove underneath as the guy was up there in the “boom” wiring it up. Since then they’ve been springing up, like Michael Jordan running through a Mexican Jumping Bean field.

Then last weekend I picked up a paper by chance, and beheld a map showing the upcoming highway cameras, just the highway cameras. The source was from “Intelligent Transportation System & Freeway Operations, Florida Department of Transportation, District 7”. This confirms that the ITS system that controls the vehicle GPS System that I mentioned before, is also in control of the nations street cameras.

We drove around the other day, and found these things all over the place We even found a new style camera, that I’ve never seen used before. It’s mounted on that fancy x-y axis base, meaning it can “pan & zoom”, and look everywhere except for straight up-down. What was really interesting, is one we passed was looking “straight” up into the sky, but was then back to normal when passing it again after lunch. I wonder if it was looking at its God?

I decided to look up ITS & cameras, on the DOT website. I found this dated page, which details well over 100 cameras being installed around the state in July 2002 alone. I couldn’t find a page with any current totals, and if anyone learns how to, please let me know. To learn about cameras in your state, just go to your states “DOT” site and search for “ITS” and “Camera”.

How to contact your local authorities about this:

The sign is a roadragecards in case you’re wondering.