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Today’s number: 2.96 percent

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Illinois

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s speed camera program improperly issued more than $2.4 million in fines to Chicago drivers, ticketing them when cameras were supposed to be off and when the required warning signs were confusing, obscured or missing, a Tribune investigation has found.

At the same time, City Hall has systematically ticketed drivers near schools without the legally required evidence of a schoolchild in sight. A Tribune random-sample analysis puts the number of those questionable tickets at about 110,000.

Here’s how they get that 110,000 number…

A ticket-by-ticket review of 1,500 randomly chosen citations from school zones found no children were present in the photographic evidence for nearly a third of the cases, even though a child’s presence was required. That review suggests that about 110,000 tickets may have been issued without legal justification.

OK, maybe. But let’s say that’s correct.

* Now, scroll almost all the way to the end of the story…

The speed camera program has doled out more than 2.1 million tickets, most of them warnings, along with more than $81 million in fines.

110,000 supposedly bad tickets out of 2.1 million total citations is a 5.2 percent error rate. And $2.4 million in supposedly bad fines out of $81 million in total fines is 2.96 percent.

posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 10:16 am

Comments

you can show school children are present by time of day…. i woukd rather erre on the side of making people aftaid to speed around schools then saying only break if you see a kid

Comment by Ghost Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 10:19 am
No mention of the Trib’s finding that caution lights were shortened near many of the cameras.

Comment by Streator Curmudgeon Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 10:21 am
Yeah, as long YOU aren’t in that 5.2% who gets hit with a bad ticket and has to decide whether to go through the hoops to try to get it taken care of (and the City’s process is highly stacked against you) or just accept the risk to your insurance premium and if you get another ticket.

If there’s no evidence of children present there should be no citation or warning issued–period. If the Trib can do that, so can the City. An error rate of maybe 0.5% would be acceptable., 5% is WAY too high and says they are being cavalier or, as everybody knows, just after the money.

Comment by Harry Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 10:23 am
How many of those were for Rahm’s motorcade?

Comment by Formerly Known As... Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 10:37 am
The Tribune did an investigation?

Comment by Mama Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 10:40 am
How many tickets did Rauner & his superstars get?

Comment by Mama Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 10:42 am
Harry, I don’t necessarily disagree. I was just crunching some numbers that weren’t part of the story.

Context is important. They sold a whole lotta sizzle in that lede.

Comment by Rich Miller Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 10:44 am
As the cop says to the motorist: We can’t catch them all, but we caught you. You WERE speeding.

Comment by DuPage Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 10:48 am
I have some sympathy for those that got tickets in error, but not a whole lot. Just obey the traffic laws and you won’t get a ticket. I live a block away from the camera mentioned in the article and drive past it all the time, and I’ve never received a ticket from any of these cameras.

And to Harry: what is left out of the article is that over half of the people that appeal their tickets BY MAIL win their case.

Comment by Just Me Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 10:53 am
=you can show school children are present by time of day…. i woukd rather erre on the side of making people aftaid to speed around schools then saying only break if you see a kid=

There’s nothing worse than driving along on a street with a 35 mph speed at 9pm at night, when the guy in front of you slams on the brakes because he noticed the school zone sign and doesn’t want to speed.

Comment by Carhartt Representative Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 10:58 am
I got a ticket for cruising through a red light. I was on the way to my best friend’s funeral, and I absolutely did not see the light. Didn’t even slow down.

There were no cars coming, and I would never have known I even did it if it weren’t for the red light cameras. When I got the ticket, I realized what I had done — and I realized how lucky I was that I didn’t hurt someone (including my daughter, who was with me in the car.)

Thanks to the red light camera, I realized that it could be a deadly mistake to drive while I was so distracted. From now on, I will treat “driving while extremely distressed” like “driving while drunk” — i.e., get someone else to take the wheel.

Comment by Soccermom Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 10:59 am
Good thing this wasn’t a Rauner initiative.

Comment by anon Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 11:36 am
Just because there’s no children present, doesn’t mean the driver was still driving the legal limit at that time, 35 for instance. I’m sure readers have seen the “catch you” speed trap reports on the local news.

Comment by Anon221 Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 11:50 am
What in the world is so hard about not speeding and NOT blowing off red lights. I would also love to see a camera nail people who don’t use turn signals.

Comment by Anonymous Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 11:54 am
It is a complete racket to make money off of motorists. I received a ticket for violating a parking ordinance which was suspect. I challenged it because the ticket incorrectly indicated that my care was illegally parked 1-1/2 blocks North of its actual physical location.

None of this mattered to the administrative law judge who had a quota to meet. The thing is to appeal the case to the Circuit Court costs six times as much as the fine. Even if you win, the nonrefundable court fee would cost more than paying the fine.

Comment by Anon Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 11:56 am
@ Just Me: “I have some sympathy for those that got tickets in error, but not a whole lot. Just obey the traffic laws and you won’t get a ticket.”

The whole point is that these people WERE obeying the traffic laws and got tickets anyway.

Comment by JoanP Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 11:59 am
Just because a child is not in the cameras view doesn’t mean a child isn’t present. Again, don’t speed where kids are likely to be.

Comment by Anonymous Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 12:02 pm
I have successfully contested three tickets thus far for which there was no child in sight. It’s a pain (though now I can just copy the same complaint letter for future use).

The larger problem is that I shouldn’t be watching the sidewalks to see if there are children present. Or thinking about whether school is in session when I’m driving past a school. It’s far safer for me to simply drive 30 mph and focus on the road.

We have a lot of great technology now. I’m favor of using technology to catch violations. But we could also be using technology to make the roads safer in the first place. For example, an electronic sign that just tells drivers that either school is in session and we should drive 20 mph or tells us that limit is 30 mph. That shouldn’t be hard to do.

While we are at it, how about making the sign large? I find it strange that the school signs are smaller than the regular speed limit signs.

Comment by Darren72 Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 12:07 pm
=But we could also be using technology to make the roads safer in the first place=

I think the ambiguity is the point (and as you argue, at the expense of safety).

As an aside, apparently Chicago Administrative Law Judges interpret the language “school day” to mean “week day.” I got a school zone ticket going 30 mph past Lane Tech in MID JULY. Google revealed no summer school in session. My appeal was rejected.

Comment by Anderson Villy Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 12:17 pm
On one hand it is an extortion scheme to ticket people and make a very difficult process to prove they did nothing wrong because there is no witness to the crime. In many traffic cases the defense is more than the ticket.

On the other hand, you live/work in Chicago and if this is the big anti bad government story you hang your hat on, you have issues.

I just wonder why the City can’t put cameras on the streets the police won’t go to catch all the people getting shot, just sayin.

Comment by the Patriot Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 12:19 pm
It boggles the imagination to think of how much money Chicago manages to waste. Think of it, parking and traffic fines used to be routinely dismissed. The revenue streams from fines collected has sky rocketed. This was like found money as it was not so readily available to prior mayoral administrations. Nevertheless, Daley and Emanuel are still in debt despite rigorous collection activities.

Comment by Anon Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 12:29 pm
Speeding in a school zone is a separate offense from plain old speeding. Couldn’t the City issue violations for simple speeding when no children are visible?

Comment by nona Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 12:48 pm
== the risk to your insurance premium ==

These aren’t moving violations, are they? Aren’t they like red-light tickets, which do not count as points against a driver’s DL?

Comment by nona Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 12:49 pm
at least these people actually live or arenin chicago…. thats an improvement over the prior system where tickets went to people who were never there.

Comment by Ghost Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 1:06 pm
Nothing in the Constitution about cars. Just guns and religion.

Comment by Jack Stephens Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 1:16 pm
The system was designed to make money period. The cameras were placed where they knew the most revenue would be generated not where the accidents occurred. Two I pssed every day are examples. One at the bottom of a hill just off the expressway and the other by a small religious school that has little or no student foot traffic. Cha-ching!

Comment by Amother blue canary Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 1:37 pm
Don’t children have 2nd Amendment Rights? Can’t they CC and defend themselves from Automobile Terrorists?

Comment by Jack Stephens Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 1:39 pm
That’s an unconscionably high error rate. It’s on the scale of credit card skimming. To put it another way, imagine the case load for the administrative judges if all those tickets are contested.

Comment by Angry Chicagoan Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 1:43 pm
I feel the number and percent are too low. Just my gut. If it were double or triple would people be more upset? When the systems fails or is rigged in favor of the government how do we ever it get it right?

In my opinion, this continues to expansion of Big Government - that is funding people and system that flawed.

Comment by Cannon649 Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 1:46 pm
So a 5.2% error rate.

The old rule in statistics is “68–95–99.7 rule” (actually; 68.27%, 95.45% and 99.73% of the values lie within one, two and three standard deviations of the mean, respectively).

Link is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68%E2%80%9395%E2%80%9399.7_rule

If they have all this fancy red light camera technology and they still have a 5.2% error rate (that’s only 2 Sigma), there’s something seriously wrong.

One out of every 20 is a failure? Maybe there should be a Consumer Products Safety Commission recall.

Those folks got some issues with their technology.

Comment by Judgment Day (on the road) Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 1:48 pm
Maybe we can direct all the red light camera income to the CCAP. At least then it is not about greedy cops/judges/municipalities.

Comment by thechampaignlife Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 2:55 pm
Context is important. There are still a couple unexplored issues.

Are these all in reduced speed school zones? Or just school speed enforcement zones? If people were over the normal speed limit, I really don’t care whether there’s a kid present. Enforce the law. But if these are “20 mph on school days when children are present” and someone is getting a ticket for going 32 when children aren’t present, that’s a big deal.

The frustrating thing to me about this and the last Trib “investigation” of ticket cameras is not only that they sold a lot of sizzle. But that they never even offered the best parts of the meat, not even in the last paragraph.

Comment by some doofus Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 3:04 pm
I can tell you that in St. Louis they have red light cameras and I got a ticket. I was turning right and there were 3 lanes. The lights turned green for the 3 lanes (which were bigger) and the turn light delayed 3 seconds. The 3 lights turned green and I started to go and click, I got a ticket then the turn light turned green. At the intersections that had no red light cameras, all the lights turned green at the same time. I fought it and lost. I say take them ALL out because we cannot trust the gov’t to use them reaponsibly.

Comment by Crispy Critter Thursday, Nov 19, 15 @ 3:48 pm