Sarah Mueller
The Revenue Estimating Conference for Highway Safety Licenses and Fees met Tuesday. The figures remain close to the previous year-to-date forecast, with some variations.
Highlights include red light camera revenue, which dropped 26% in November only to spring back up in preliminary data for December.
State officials didn’t know why there was a drop, except for maybe fewer drivers running red lights? But there could be a future rise in revenue because of population growth and a coming expansion of red light camera use in a central Florida county.
Personal Injury Protection car insurance reinstatements are down around $1 million compared with the prior year. State officials appear puzzled by the decrease. Most of the money for PIP comes later in the year, so many people may currently be delaying paying the $150 fee until tax return time.
But they point to a downward trend in the number of tickets being issued across the state for traffic violations. In 2015, law enforcement issued 797,840 speeding tickets to drivers, compared to 664,000 in 2018.
Overall, 2 million tickets were given to drivers in 2015, compared to around 1.8 million just three years later. The cause is unknown, but officials note that Florida has a high rate of uninsured drivers. PIP suspensions can last up to three years.
Crash report revenue is down 20% from the prior year as the state moved the operation in-house. It expects to recover from the revenue downturn and save members of the public money when they request a report.
2 comments
Charlotte Greenbarg
January 8, 2020 at 7:31 am
Which Central Florida county?
Tom McCarey
January 8, 2020 at 3:12 pm
Red light cameras increase accidents, injuries and fatalities: they make the highways more dangerous. Red light camera promoters are chronic liars endorsing a known fraudulent product that injures and kills people. Red light cameras should be banned.
50% of red light fatalities come from police chases. The rest are the result of DUI, lack of attention and failure to yield. These accidents will not and cannot be prevented by red light cameras – cameras only take pictures.
70% of red light violations, that camera promoters characterize as wanton “red light running,” occur within one second of the red. In other words, honest, split-second mistakes that cause no harm.
These red light violations make the camera companies and the government tens of millions of dollars. This is money literally stolen from safe drivers, stolen on a split-second technicality by “GOTCHA” technology.
If one second is added to the yellow time, these violations disappear, forever, making intersections safer. Yet, camera proponents never disclose this information. Probably because it will make red light cameras unprofitable.
The only studies that show red light cameras make intersection safer are studies done by groups who profit from red light camera revenue, and those studies suffer from improper methodology. Every honest study, done with proper methodology, done by researchers with no financial connection to red light cameras, show that the cameras increase accidents, injuries and fatalities, and that they do not reduce t-bone collisions.
The biggest booster of red light cameras is the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS),
an organization funded by auto insurers. Red light camera tickets earn billions of dollars in policy surcharges for the auto insurers, so naturally they want red light cameras everywhere.
Governments get tens of millions of dollars from red light camera tickets, so they, too, are gung-ho for red light cameras. The more the better, even though the cameras make intersections more dangerous.
The dangers of red light cameras have been known for over 20 years. Read Dick Armey’s report https://www.motorists.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/armeyreport.pdf
And for more background on red light camera go to https://www.motorists.org/issues/red-light-cameras/
for information the IIHS or AAA will never tell you.
Oh yes, the man who introduced red light cameras to the US, Richard Retting, was a paid employee of the IIHS for years before becoming a paid red light camera lobbyist
https://www.thenewspaper.com/news/41/4136.asp
Ban red light cameras for safer roads. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Tom McCarey Member, National Motorists Association
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