Is running red lights in Fayetteville rampant? [The Fayetteville Observer, N.C.]

Feb. 21--One night in January, a driver sped through a red light at Morganton and Skibo roads and nearly hit the car Army Spc. Chris Stoor was riding in.

"In a split second, my buddy had to swerve out of the way," said Stoor, who was glad to see a police officer stop the driver moments later.

Stoor and others say running red lights is rampant in Fayetteville.

"All the time, especially at night," said Jessica Pierce of Fayetteville.

In an effort to gauge the frequency of red-light running in the city, Fayetteville Observer reporters monitored five busy intersections for a total of about nine hours.

The reporters counted 51 people running red lights, roughly one every 11 minutes.

On Raeford Road at Bingham Drive, a red light was run only once every 40 minutes during two hours of morning rush-hour traffic. But on Owen Drive at Village Drive, 11 drivers ran red lights between 5 and 6 p.m., an average of once every 5 minutes and 27 seconds.

Sgt. Eric Dow, supervisor of the Police Department's Traffic Enforcement Unit, said he thinks his officers are "making an honest effort" to stop people from running red lights.

Dow said his unit sometimes picks particular areas for intense enforcement based on public complaints, an unusually high number of wrecks or officer observations.

He said he may send his officers to several of the intersections the Observer surveyed.

"I would say it's pretty obvious that at some of these locations that we definitely have a red-light problem," he said.

If drivers run a red light every five to six minutes, Dow said, that's a potential crash every second or third traffic-light cycle.

Police issued 38,445 tickets for all types of traffic violations in 2009. Of those, 1,132 -- or 2.9 percent -- were for running red lights. Another 96 warning tickets were issued.

That's an average of 3.4 tickets issued each day citing or warning drivers for running red lights.

Cost in lives, money

Running red lights is not only dangerous, it can be expensive.

Dow estimated that seven of 10 wrecks at intersections with traffic lights are caused by drivers who run red lights. Often, those wrecks are "T-bone" collisions in which a vehicle slams into the side of another vehicle.

"Those are typically more dangerous because, structurally, that is the weakest part of the car," Dow said. "There's not a whole lot there separating you from that car coming at you at 45 mph."

Drivers who disregarded traffic signals in North Carolina caused wrecks 6,833 times in 2005, the state Division of Motor Vehicles said in its most-recent "Traffic Crash Facts" report. Such drivers were a cause in fatal accidents 32 times that year and were a factor 3,370 times in wrecks with injuries.

All of those wrecks cost drivers, especially in Fayetteville, which has the highest base auto insurance rate in North Carolina. Areas surrounding Fayetteville have the second-highest rate.

According to the state Department of Insurance, a 2009 Ford that costs $1,145 a year to insure in Fayetteville costs only $829 to insure in Asheville, which has the cheapest rates. In rural Cumberland County, the same vehicle costs $1,073 to insure.

Insurance rates are based on the number of wrecks in the community, said Insurance Department spokeswoman Kristin Milam.

"The more claims you have, the more losses you have. Then your rates are going to reflect that because you're in a riskier area," she said.

Who runs red lights?

According to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, red light runners tend to be young, are less likely to use safety belts and have bad driving records. They drive smaller and older vehicles, the institute found.

A driver's gender was not a factor, according to the institute.

Soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may be more prone to run red lights.

A study last year by the University of Minnesota found that more than 20 percent of soldiers returning to the United States acknowledged using combat driving techniques designed to avoid exposure to roadside bombs or other attacks. Those techniques include running stop signs and straddling lanes.

Stoor, the soldier who was nearly hit by a red-light runner in January, said his brother had trouble adjusting to obeying traffic laws after returning with the Army from overseas.

"When he came home on R&R, all he wanted to do was drive in the middle of the road, and he just said that's what he was trained to do." Stoor said.

Red-light cameras

From 2000 to 2006, Fayetteville equipped eight intersections with cameras that automatically snapped photos of people running red lights. Violators received $50 tickets in the mail.

A Fayetteville Observer analysis of crash records from those intersections shows that wrecks related to people running or trying to stop for red lights fell by an average of 27 percent.

The city shut down the red-light cameras after North Carolina courts ruled that, under the state Constitution, fines generated by law enforcement must be given to local school systems.

"I thought we had a good thing going, and politics and money and everything else got involved and we lost a very viable safety program," said Dow, the police supervisor. "I'd like to see us get it back, for sure."

Studies conflict on whether red-light cameras make the roads safer. Critics say the cameras boost the number of rear-end collisions as drivers stomp on the brakes in an effort to avoid getting a ticket.

In 2005, an analysis of seven cities by the Federal Highway Safety Administration found that red-light camera systems reduced the number of right-angle collisions but led to an increase in rear-end collisions.

Rear-end collisions generally cause less damage and injury than angle crashes, according to the study, which concluded that the cameras saved the average community $39,000 a year at each location where they were used.

"Anything in safety is a trade-off," said David Noyce, director of the Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "We can't prevent crashes from happening, but I'd take a fender-bender over a major crash any day."

Researchers at N.C. A&T State University in Greensboro also studied red-light cameras. They concluded in 2004 that Greensboro's cameras increased rear-end collisions and had no effect on the number of collisions. It called the cameras "a detriment to safety."

The Greensboro researchers chose to leave out some types of angle crashes that other studies counted.

A report published in Florida Public Health Review in 2008 said University of South Florida researchers found flaws and bias in studies indicating that the cameras made roads safer. The report said advocates of red-light cameras in the auto insurance industry have a profit motive: If a red-light camera generates collisions, the insurance companies can say the community is more dangerous and raise its rates.

Who pays for cameras?

At its peak, Fayetteville's red-light camera program had 10 cameras at eight intersections. By the end, the cameras generated more than 73,000 tickets, and drivers paid nearly $3.7 million in fines.

The cameras appear to have been effective at reducing wrecks in Fayetteville.

The intersections where they were used had an average of 10.4 crashes related to red lights a year before the cameras were installed, according to statistics from the city's Traffic Services Division. Afterward, the average intersection had 7.6 such wrecks per year.

The numbers have risen since the cameras were removed -- to an average of about nine a year.

A conflict over money makes it unlikely that the cameras will return.

When Fayetteville got permission from the General Assembly in 1999 to install the cameras, city leaders decided that ticketed drivers should pay for them.

With each $50 ticket, a private contractor operating the cameras earned $35. The more tickets the system issued, the more money the contractor made.

The city kept the remaining $15 and dedicated it to improving traffic safety at railroad crossings near schools.

Other North Carolina cities had similar arrangements for the cameras to pay for themselves.

In May 2006, the N.C. Court of Appeals rejected most of the state's self-supporting red-light camera arrangements after a driver challenged a camera ticket he received in High Point.

North Carolina's Constitution bars local governments from making money from fines levied to enforce the law. Instead, the "clear proceeds" from law enforcement fines must be turned over to the public schools.

The Court of Appeals, citing a state law defining "clear proceeds," said the cities can use no more than 10 percent of the price of a ticket toward the cost of collecting the fines.

With the fine set at $50, $45 of each ticket had to go to the school system. Once the city paid the contractor and the schools, the city would have spent $30 of taxpayer money for each camera ticket issued.

The cameras could have continued to be used in Fayetteville if the City Council agreed to use taxpayer dollars to underwrite the operating costs.

Wilmington and New Hanover County do that with red-light cameras. The city and county each put $200,000 of taxpayer money toward the operation of 13 cameras in Wilmington, city Traffic Engineer Don Bennett said.

Don't look for Fayetteville to follow Wilmington's example, Fayetteville Mayor Tony Chavonne said.

"I think in light of the budget constraints we're in right now, it's unlikely we could make that happen," he said.

City leaders recently learned that they face a $6.9 million budget deficit in fiscal 2011, which begins July 1, unless they raise revenue or cut expenses.

What about Raleigh?

Wake County cities Raleigh, Cary and Knightdale continue to operate self-supporting red-light cameras, despite the 2006 Court of Appeals decision.

The law that grants those cities permission to have the cameras is different from the law that authorized cameras elsewhere.

Wake County's law specifies that its communities may use the fine revenue to cover operating costs. Anything left over goes to the local Board of Education.

In the past two years, Wake County's school system has received $332,000 from camera tickets, a Wake County Board of Education spokesman said.

Fayetteville would like to get a red-light camera law similar to Wake County's, Chavonne said.

But that would be difficult. Wake County's law hasn't been challenged in court.

Steve Rose, a lawyer with the legislature, has drafted some of North Carolina's red-light camera laws. He thinks Wake County's law is at risk of being struck down under the 2006 court ruling.

Any lawmaker who tries to expand Wake County's law to cover Fayetteville would get this advice: "There is a very good chance it would be held to be unconstitutional," Rose said, "and we don't say that lightly."

The concept of self-supporting red-light cameras goes against more than a century of state court rulings on how the proceeds from fines can be spent, said lawyer Marshall Hurley of Greensboro. Hurley represented the High Point driver whose lawsuit shut down most red-light cameras in North Carolina. "Part of the irony and the hypocrisy of this is the municipalities don't want to pay for what they say is an essential service," Hurley said.

When the money was shut off, "all of a sudden the safety factor isn't all that 'necessary,' " Hurley said. "It makes you wonder what their priorities are and what they are trying to accomplish."

Stop or not?

Not everyone thinks the cameras are necessary.

The police are doing plenty to catch red-light runners, said Shaun Andrews of Fayetteville. Cameras would make the roads safer, he said, but he had a less expensive idea: "Even if they didn't have cameras, if they just had the signs that said there were cameras, people would slow down and stop."

Elise Smith, who operates a construction business, thinks the cameras reduced red-light running and the effect continues even though they have been gone for more than three years.

The cameras "woke a lot of people up to safety issues," she said.

Smith would like to see the cameras returned because she thinks they make the roads safer, but only if they were self-supporting.

"I don't want my tax dollars going towards cameras," she said.

Staff writer Paul Woolvertoncan be reached at [email protected] (910) 486-3512.

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