EDITORIAL: Red-light cameras work; keep them coming

Aug. 24--So you're driving down Bragg Boulevard, doing the 45 mph limit -- well OK, maybe five over -- and you see a traffic light ahead. The light turns yellow when you're about 100 feet from the intersection. You hit the brakes. And the guy in the little black street racer with a loud exhaust and a spoiler bolted on the trunk -- the one who was stuck to your rear bumper for the last mile -- swerves into the right lane, zips past you and through the intersection, two full seconds after the light turned red.

Oh, and traffic on the crossroad had already started into the intersection. Close call.

Welcome to driving as usual in Fayetteville, a city where too many drivers consider traffic lights optional advisories and T-bone crashes are a regular menu item on the accident reports.

That's why we were grateful when Fayetteville found a way around a court decision that required all fines from red-light cameras to go directly to public school systems. That meant cities using the cameras couldn't divert part of the fines to the cameras' operating costs. All the North Carolina cities using the cameras -- including Fayetteville -- dropped them.

But what if the school system itself owned the cameras, and chose to pay the operating costs? Turns out, that complies with the state constitution. So we got the red-light cameras back and some of our most dangerous intersections got a little safer.

In just over a year, more than 16,000 citations have been issued and nearly 11,000 have been paid. The fine is $100, of which $65 goes to the school system and $35 goes to the vendor who runs the cameras. That's a windfall of about $700,000 for the schools and safer intersections for city drivers.

So we're happy to hear more of the cameras are on the way. By early next year, they'll be added to intersections on Grove Street, Skibo Road, Raeford Road and Owen and Village drives, near the hospital. We hope the city keeps them coming, especially when traffic-safety records reveal other intersections that need to be safer.

And we'd take it another step too: The city should be using every available 21st century tool to help monitor traffic and catch scofflaws. That would include cameras that nab speeders.

Red-light runners, speeders and other reckless drivers are pushing up our accident rates and the insurance bills of good, law-abiding drivers too.

Keep snapping those pictures.

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