Because I pay attention to the news here in Lubbock, it’s blatantly and sadly obvious to me that the Mayor Miller regime is in full swing. Unfortunately, those that don’t watch the local news are about to get reminders regularly, in the form of those terrible little red-light cameras Big Brother Miller has been stumping for since August. Now that there are actual locations decided for these cameras, it seems as though they’re a disgusting inevitability.

According to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, the first red-light camera may very well be installed by March of 2007, with the rest following soon. Last Tuesday, the Citizens Traffic Commission approved cameras in sixteen intersections, later to be narrowed down to twelve. The spending-addicted Lubbock politicians are salivating over the projected extra revenue, but do find time in their push against our citizens to suggest that these measures may help our citizens stay safer.

City traffic engineer Jere Hart discussed the new revenue for the already budget-busting city council last month. The Lubbock AJ said “Assuming that each citation warranted a $75 fine, and about 14 citations were issued per day, with 60 percent of those citations being paid, the potential net revenue for the first year could be about $2 million, with possible drops in revenue in later years” Councilman John Leonard, one of the two that is actually willing to fight for the citizens of Lubbock, was very displeased with the idea of the cameras, calling them a revenue-generating invasion of privacy.

According to the city by their projections, the cameras will generate an extra 14 thousand dollars a month. They said this money could go to additional police officers, public safety dispatchers and equipment. I find these noble expenditures a little hard to believe, considering the lack of incentives to become a city employee such as a police officer, since Miller’s council cut their health benefits. All the council wants to do is inflate the city’s budget even more, so they have more money to play with.

The Washington Post did their own study into the effective capacities of red-light cameras in their area in October of 2005. They said of intersections with cameras, "The data are very clear," said Dick Raub, a traffic consultant and a former senior researcher at Northwestern University's Center for Public Safety. "They are not performing any better than intersections without cameras.” The Washington post spoke with a spokesman for AAA mid-Atlantic, who had quite a few harsh things to say about the cameras. “They are making a heck of a lot of money, and they are picking the motorists' pockets on the pretense of safety.”

According to the Virginia Department of Transportation, Rear end crashes and total crashes with injuries increased under the watchful lens of the cameras. If the city were truly concerned about anything but their already belt-busting budget, they would have looked into the idea of extending the yellow light period, as brought up by a Lubbock citizen in the local paper. Brad Johnson, a Lubbock citizen, brought many damning facts to light in his letter to the editor, my favorite of which is “Extending yellow intervals to 3-4 seconds and incorporating a 1-2 second overlap on reds decreases intersection accidents (by 94 percent in one Virginia DOT report).”

Not only are red-light cameras ridiculous, due to their blatant nature of invading the privacy of motorists in the cause of allowing the city council to waste more of our money, but they will also pose as yet another distraction to the addled motorists of our city as well. Driving has plenty of hazards and distractions, already coupled with the terrible timing of the Lubbock traffic light system anyway. The last thing the city needs is yet another distraction, all at the expense of the safety of our citizens. The Mayor and the City Council have never had their citizens at the top of their priority list. At this point, I’m inclined to believe that the best thing that Mayor Miller and most of his city council could do for Lubbock is quit. Until Miller and his band of Big Brothers are out of office, the residents of Lubbock will likely be able to look forward to more inflated taxes, bloated local government spending, and sadly, surveillance for our daily lives.