Posted on 03/30/2005 2:40:00 PM PST by RWR8189
Two camera-equipped vans will begin patrolling highway work zones in July, snapping images of drivers violating the 45 m.p.h posted speed limit, officials of the Illinois Department of Transportation announced today.
The vans will patrol expressway and tollway construction and maintenance zones.
Signs will warn drivers of the photo radar system, which will take a picture of the offending driver, his or her vehicle and record the vehicle's speed, officials said. Drivers captured on camera will be sent a ticket in the mail.
Work zone speeding fines increased last year to a $375 penalty on the first offense, almost double the previous $200 fine. A second ticket can result in a fine of up to $1,000 and a 90-day driver's license suspension.
Motorists who strike a highway worker can be fined up to $10,000 and sentenced to as much as 14 years in prison, officials said.
IDOT's announcement represents yet another use of technology by authorities to crack down on traffic scofflaws.
Chicago has been installing stationary cameras at busy intersections to catch and ticket red-light runners. During approximately the first year of the program, cameras at 10 locations had generated 67,400 citations, city officials said last fall.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Where's those teens with paint guns/cans when you need them?
they should be calling these things IDIOT cams because the people that allow these things to get put up are IDIOTS
And so I am not traveling in Illinois and i am not ordering products from there. This is Gestapo at it's best.
LOL - I had to look at that headline 3 times before I realized it didn't say 'IDIOT'.
I thought it said "idiot" and wondered why you were talking to me.
What would happen if you wore a face mask while driving thru a work zone? How would they know who was driving the car?
Wear a Hillary mask. :)
ol' hoghead
Not needed. Texas had the parked vans and stationary cameras in medians in the 70's. Bricks, cinder blocks and shotguns took them out.
For the vans, we used to go out at night and pull up one of the trip lines and move them to within a few inches of each other. People were getting their photos in the mail with clocked speeds of 215+ mph.
Its all about the money, Just another form of road tax.
I wonder if this is another way of collecting revenue.
That's usually the REAL reason behind these crackdowns. The tired old cry of "Public Safety!" is wearing a little thin.
If they cared about the vehicles speed in a construction zone they would stop the speeders immediately.
Not stopping them, or IOWs allowing them to speed and just mail them the ticket is purely a cash grab and doesn't protect the road workers as stated.
Bogus reasoning for bogus income. This is sooooooo wrong.
They need to check how well it worked in Hawaii, LOL. The state paid a bundle for the system, totally botched the way they implemented it, including a spokeswoman for the DOT who insisted there would be no tolerance whatsoever.
So everybody dropped their speed 10 miles LOWER than the limit - the jams were horrendous.
Since they used a private firm and since social security numbers were part of a lot of older drivers' licenses, it didn't stand up long in court. STUPID! There are license plate covers you can buy that reflect the camera flash. I bought a couple just before they decided to stop using the cams.
I didn't see the part where they shoot the violators! Just obey the damned law, and you won't have to worry how it is enforced.
This is the solution.....Slow to 10 or 15 miles under the speed limit. I am glad you mentioned the great solution for these revenue monsters. Remember the key: When traffic laws are strictly enforced revenues for the city and the insurance carriers go up....
Oh, we don't shoot them, yet.
We've got time.
We dehydrate and starve them to death.
You bet it's all about money. DC is projecting a billion dollar surplus this year thanks to all the money the Mayor's "tax collectors" are hauling in with their cameras and radars. And wait until you see how fast DC will piss away that surplus too.
a dozen eggs and a 5lb sack of flour will take care of that...that's what they did to the unmanned photo radar vans where I'm from...the new government party eventually dumped them...too many people were messing them up..
Also with computers and digital cameras being everywhere it becomes really easy to scam people with fake photo radar tickets...that also happened where I'm from.
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