Wall Street Journal 

Can the Red-Light Camera Be Saved?

Money-hungry politicians discredit a hopeful safety innovation.

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Dec. 26, 2014 6:38 p.m. ET 

A promising industry betrayed by the behavior of its customers—that’s the story of the red-light camera business. 

Diligent annotators of the column will recognize the name Redflex Traffic Systems, leading practitioner of the once-sparkling business of setting up automatic traffic-enforcement systems for municipalities. The company and its industry were set to grow. The product improved traffic safety, freed up officers for more important work, and paid for itself. Towns and cities didn’t even have to budget a dime upfront because Redflex assumed the costs and risks of setting up cameras at designated intersections. 

That was then. Amid scandals and political blowback, the industry is actually shrinking. James Saunders, Redflex’s U.S. chief, put on a brave face when he stopped by the Journal for a recent chin-wag, but a question is whether growth will ever return.

Redflex’s previous management hardly helped matters by blundering into a procurement scandal in Chicago, costing the company its biggest contract. What may hurt more, though, are serial revelations by the Chicago Tribune about the city’s buccaneering ways—running its camera system for profits rather than safety. 

The political warfare over red-light cameras has “deeply affected the business and made it a very difficult business,” Mr. Saunders acknowledges.

When I put it to him that his clients have wrecked the reputation of his product, he waves off a chance to “say anything bad about our customers,” adding that the jurisdictions giving its products a bad name are “outliers.”

“Cities are less concerned with revenue generation than you think,” he adds.

That is not the reputation. New York state conspicuously authorized cameras at various upstate locations in 2010 to close a budget gap. When New Jersey last week let a five-year experiment lapse amid a voter backlash, Moody’s called the decision a “credit negative” for local treasuries. In California, public acceptance steadily eroded as politicians kept piling on “surcharges” that turn a hundred-dollar traffic offense into a $500 fine in the mail.

This week came the coup de grâce. The Chicago Tribune delivered the “first-ever scientific study” of the nation’s biggest camera program. Researchers commissioned by the paper found little or no safety benefit: Mid-intersection “T-bones” declined, but rear-end collisions sharply increased as drivers slammed on the brakes to avoid a ticket. Most damning, the Trib cited the city’s “long-standing reliance on using the lowest possible yellow light time” to maximize revenues even at the cost of encouraging more accidents.

Mr. Saunders’s customer base has been contracting as irate voters force politicians to unplug the cameras. With Redflex losing money in North America, its Australian parent company recently instructed him to “de-risk the business” by diversifying into electronic toll-taking and traffic management. Nonetheless Mr. Saunders remains keen to rescue the reputation of photo enforcement, even if that seems like a Hail Mary at this point.

Early next year, Redflex plans to make available a free app to alert motorists to the location of every traffic camera. This will reinforce the idea, he says, that paying traffic fines is “voluntary”—don’t violate and you won’t get dinged.

Redflex hopes also to become a leader in bringing safety solutions to problem intersections that don’t involve enforcement cameras, such as landscaping to improve sight lines. A new product, “Halo,” is a potential lifesaver because it automatically extends the red for conflicting traffic when it senses a vehicle about to blow through a stoplight.

As for a universal peeve of motorists, being fined for a harmless rolling right on red, Mr. Saunders suggests jurisdictions refrain from issuing a ticket except when a pedestrian is in the crosswalk.

The purpose of red-light cameras, he stresses, has always been to change behavior, not ring up revenues. But unlike in his last job, making body and vehicle armor for U.S. troops, he has learned not to expect letters from the user base “thanking me for the accidents that didn’t happen.”

Still, a risk hangs over his game plan: If municipalities begin to use red-light cameras properly, won’t the revenue drop-off be so great that politicians no longer will be interested?