Illinois

This sucks an awful lot of money out of the local economy, which is very short sighted.

Last summer, I received a red-light camera ticket initiated in Hillside, IL. The fine was $100 and the ticket listed a URL where you can enter your ticket code and watch a video loop of the infraction. I watched it several times and could see that I HAD completely stopped prior to making a right turn on red, so I opted to go to court and fight it.

I was astonished to find around 150 people in the makeshift traffic courtroom/great-hall fighting their tickets as well, so I awaited my turn. Each person who approached stood across the table from 2 officers and a judge. There were computer monitors facing both sides, so judge and accused could both watch the video and discuss. The average conversation with the judge was around 60-seconds and most people had never viewed the video prior to the court date, so the conversation was very brief "pay the fine, it won't appear on your record".

Some of the longer conversations were angry rants about the intersection, being forced to run the red due to approaching emergency vehicles, begin part of a funeral procession, and lots of other explanations. When my name was called, I approached and said only "good afternoon". We watched the video loop, he winked at me and called the next case.

I appreciated saving the $100, but was miffed that there are likely a great number who can't take time to fight these tickets and either pay of let them go to collection (where it can get much nastier). I suppose the people who review the videos prior to issuing the ticket must enforce a bit too tightly in hopes their business model will result in undeserved revenue.

In sum, I dislike these cams as they don't make things safer, can make things worse by causing rear-end collisions, and take a lot of money out of circulation in the area.