Posted on 06/11/2007 2:27:22 PM PDT by FreedomCalls
Despite the opposition of the state legislature, the Texas Department of Transportation proposes a federally funded speed camera test.
Despite the near-unanimous opposition in the state legislature to the use of speed cameras, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is moving forward on a proposal to deploy photo radar on state highways using federal gas tax funds. Legislation awaiting Governor Rick Perry's signature prohibited only municipalities -- like Marble Falls and Rhome -- from installing automated speeding ticket systems. It was silent on the possibility of a state-run system (read legislation).
TxDOT began searching in April for a vendor that, using federal funds, would allow the agency "to assess and evaluate all elements of an automated speed notification system." Once selected, the vendor would operate an average time speed camera test for at least six months on Interstate 10 near El Paso and State Highway 6 near College Station.
Time-distance ticketing systems use multiple cameras spaced far apart on a freeway. Each car is photographed once as it enters the first section of road. Miles later a second photograph is taken that allows the vehicle's average speed to be calculated from the time it took to travel between the two locations. In use in Britain under the trade name SPECS, these cameras are commonly referred to as "yellow vultures" and are among the most lucrative in the country.
In its request for proposals, TxDOT cited success of speed cameras in the UK, which generated £120 million (US $240 million) in revenue in 2003, and in Washington, DC, which has generated $217 million in revenue with its red light and speed cameras since 1999. TxDOT's vendor will send notices -- warnings at first -- to motorists driving just 5 MPH over the limit with an accuracy level of +/- 2 MPH, meaning those driving just 3 MPH over the limit could receive a photograph and letter in the mail.
The River Cities Daily Tribune, which first reported the story last week, noted that TxDOT also ordered Marble Falls to remove its speed camera van from state highways in April citing safety concerns.
"How hypocritical is that?" Marble Falls Mayor Raymond Whitman told the Daily Tribune. "I have a bit of a problem with it, not because they're using the camera, but because if it's unsafe for us to use, how can it be safe for the state to do it?"
A full copy of the TxDOT speed camera request for proposals is available in a 219k PDF file at the source link below.
Source: Automated Speed Notification Services (Texas Department of Transportation, 4/1/2007)
Too many Mexicans. Take’m down.
Michigan AG says their illegal, wonder if TX AG will too?
You got that right!
It’s all about making cash from the motorist, the new government cashcow.
Texans need to purchase a lot of Tar & Feathers. (Send copies of the purchase orders to the director of the Texas Dept of Transportation.)
Think “kickbacks”, the companies that make these machines share in the revenue. Some well placed “lubrication” in the form of green pieces of paper with dead presidents on them and voila, constant surveillance police state America. What a brave new world we’re heading towards.
which generated £120 million (US $240 million) in revenue in 2003
One hopes the good people of Texas will make good use of their firearms and remove these nuisances from the public way.
But they’re going to use THIS against American citizens, Mexican guest workers are special.
They can do but can’t do a fence. Revenue indeed.
Texas, eh?
I wonder if these cameras are .270-proof?
I don’t doubt that they’ll be the subject of leisurely target practice. lol
I hope DoT is ready for some shot out cameras.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Remember, Perry has made it clear that he doesn't need the state pay raise that was authorized.
“I wonder if these cameras are .270-proof?”
Since they continuosly sent out a K-band radar wave, they are easily avoided without resort to our 2nd Amendment protections.
A trooper with an instant-on Ka band, not so much.
“Despite the opposition of the state legislature, the Texas Department of Transportation proposes a federally funded speed camera test.”
So who’s running Texas, the elected state legislators or unelected bureaucrats?
If it’s unaccountable bureaucrats, you are living under a de facto dictatorship, where the voter’s right to be represented via the ballot box has been abolished.
In a different country a long time ago, people looked to the future and imagined a world with robot maids, cooks, doctors, chauffeurs. They would do the work while we kicked back and read the paper.
I’m still scrubbing my grill by hand and taking my own trash out, but they’re putting up robot highway robbers all over the country.
Progress?
LOL! Beat me to it.
I wonder if they’re “hacker-proof”?
I wonder HOW they id cars... by license plate?
This is America, not England. (Heck, this is TEXAS, not America!) A cottage industry will spring up to beat this crap.
“Nervous Tick Brand Front License Plate Scrambler Technology”.
Doesn’t roll off the tongue, though... I’ll need to work on an acronym.
Or perhaps chameleon paint and the rotating license plate ala James Bond.
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