Americans see red over speed cameras

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The Australian.August 2 2011.
Americans see red over speed cameras
August 2, 2011 12:00AM
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Redflex (RDF) $1.76WHILE the Republicans and Democrats in Washington dance the budget-cut limbo on the debt ceiling -- with apologies to Lionel Ritchie -- lesser US legislators are eschewing the chance to fill their diminished coffers at the expense of errant motorists.

American motorists view their right to speed and run red lights as akin to the right to bear arms, and for Redflex the US market has become even more unfavourable on a number of fronts. Redflex was last month snubbed by the city of Tempe in its home state of Arizona, which cancelled its 16-unit red-light camera contract. The town deemed the program not to be financially worthwhile, with only 30 per cent of fined motorists actually paying up.

On a grander scale, Los Angeles today removes its red-light cameras, at the expense of Redflex's arch-rival Australian Traffic Solutions. The two also face competition from a new entrant in the Maryland-based Brekford Corp, headed by a former New York traffic-safety tsar.

Brekford notes that speeding and red-light offences result in 180,000 crashes a year, at the cost of 1000 lives and 90,000 injuries a year. Pinging the culprits seems a win-win solution, but, then again, so does banning guns, which kill many times more.

Still, the resistance can't be ascribed to Americans' quirky notion of freedom: last week the NSW government shut down one-quarter of the state's speed cameras after an audit found they delivered "no significant road-safety benefit". Redflex, which derives about 75 per cent of its revenue from the US, said this would not materially affect results.