About a year ago the city of Austin started to install red light cameras at certain intersections. Driving around town a couple days ago I went through one of those intersections and commented to Wife about them.

Red light cameras are touted as being about saving lives. Bullshit. It’s about one thing: revenue. Time and time again it’s demonstrated that red-light cameras do not save lives and in fact tend to cause more accidents. It’s also been demonstrated that the revenue is awesome:

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty is pushing to expand the District’s use of automated enforcement even as the city is on pace to collect a record amount of revenue from its red-light-camera network and the second-highest total ever from its speed-camera program.

Through the first seven months of fiscal 2009, the city had issued 53,094 citations from its 49 red-light-camera locations and brought in $4.3 million in fine revenue, putting the District on pace to rake in $7.4 million by the end of September.

Since the program’s inception in 1999, the highest total brought in by the devices in a fiscal year was $7.2 million in 2000, Metropolitan Police Department statistics show.

Meanwhile, the District’s network of photo-radar cameras is on pace to bring in $30 million of revenue this fiscal year – second only to the $32.9 million brought in during fiscal 2006.

My comment?

If this really was about saving lives, then let’s change the penalty. No fines whatsoever. What should the penalty be? Well, anything that isn’t about money. Put “points” on the driver’s license. Require the driver to attend traffic safety school. Just nothing that generates revenue for the folks wanting to install the cameras (the city, county, whomever). Propose that. See what the legislators say. Reveal their true intentions.

Of course, another solution is for people to improve their driving skills. Frankly, I think some education may do more to help that than a simple fine. But the point here is to find what the politicians truly care about (as if we don’t already know).