Red Lights for Profit

TAMPA BAY, Florida — A subtle, but significant tweak to Florida’s rules regarding traffic signals has allowed local cities and counties to shorten yellow light intervals, resulting in millions of dollars in additional red light camera fines.

The 10 News Investigators discovered the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) quietly changed the state’s policy on yellow intervals in 2011, reducing the minimum below federal recommendations. The rule change was followed by engineers, both from FDOT and local municipalities, collaborating to shorten the length of yellow lights at key intersections, specifically those with red light cameras (RLCs).

…Red light cameras generated more than $100 million in revenue last year…with 52.5 percent of the revenue going to the state. The rest is divided by cities, counties, and the camera companies….”Red light cameras are a for-profit business between cities and camera companies and the state,” said James Walker, executive director of the nonprofit National Motorists Association. “The (FDOT rule-change) was done, I believe, deliberately in order that more tickets would be given with yellows set deliberately too short.”

See Buchanan and Brennan’s The Power to Tax for an analytic approach and Benson, Rasmussen and Sollars for another example of bureaucratic revenue maximization.

Hat tip: Radley Balko.