Lilly is living on the lam these days.
Lilly—not her real name, for reasons that will be obvious momentarily—got busted by one of the city’s red-light cameras a few months back as she was making a left turn at 22nd and Wilmot. She ignored the citation that arrived shortly thereafter in her mailbox and is now dodging any process servers who might try to deliver the court summons in person.
If she can keep winning the cat-and-mouse game for the next few weeks, she’ll be in the clear. And so far, it’s been easy: She says she hasn’t seen anyone even try to serve her.
It’s not the first time she’s gone through this. A self-described “pretty bad driver,” Lilly has gotten three tickets from the cameras in recent years and hasn’t paid any of them.
“They only have 120 days to serve you,” Lilly says. “Who can’t hide for 120 days?”
Lilly’s case isn’t unusual in the world of Tucson’s traffic-safety camera program, which includes two mobile vans that move around town several times a day to bust speeders and fixed cameras at eight intersections to nab speeders and people who run red lights.
If you’ve ever seen the dreaded camera flash, you know the drill: Your picture has been snapped by a high-tech system and you may now be facing a steep fine, points on your driver’s license and/or a long day in traffic-survival school.
After your photo is taken, your case is reviewed first by an employee of American Traffic Solutions, the private company that provides and maintains the traffic cams. If the evidence shows a violation, a TPD officer looks it over to decide whether you deserve a ticket. For a speeding violation, you have to have been going at least 11 miles above the speed limit and the officer has to match your face with your driver’s license photo. On the red-light violation, you get a ticket if any part of your car has not entered the intersection before the light turns red or if you’re driving more than 11 miles above the speed limit. Both systems also issue tickets if you’re not wearing a seat belt.
Once the officer has signed off on your ticket, it’s mailed to you. But that’s where the legal situation get tricky: Just mailing someone a citation is not considered to be a legal serving of a summons to appear in court; technically, such a summons must be delivered in person. The city gets around that wrinkle by having you waive your right to a personal summons when you mail back your plea.
And there’s a time limit: The city has 120 days from the date of the citation to serve you.
When you get the citation in the mail, you’re warned to mail it back within 30 days of the infraction. If you don’t mail it back, your case is turned over to a process server, who then has 90 days to personally serve you or a member of your household. And if he catches you, an extra $37 fee is attached to your fine. (The fee is higher if you have to be served outside Pima County.)
But thousands of those legal summons are never served, according to an audit of the traffic program. In fiscal year 2012, for example, 13,636 violations were dismissed—and the vast majority of those were people who managed to avoid being served, says Tucson City Court Administrator Christopher Hale.
That’s more than the 9,113 violations that resulted in drivers accepting responsibility for violating a traffic law and just below the 14,226 that resulted in violators completing defensive-driving school. (Another 2,870 violations were properly served but ignored—which results in a suspension of your driver’s license. And a relatively small percentage of violators—accounting for just more than 2,000 tickets last year—asked for a court hearing to fight the charges. They are typically unsuccessful in their arguments before a city magistrate.)
Since the first cameras were installed in 2007, more than 41,000 violations have been dismissed because people who got tickets in the mail successfully avoided being served. In the same time frame, drivers have accepted responsibility for 37,440 violations, while more than 63,000 violations have filled up seats in defensive-driving classes.
In other words, about one in four violations since the program began have been dismissed, often because because the driver was able to elude the process server.
Lilly got her first two tickets in the same place—along Broadway Boulevard just east of downtown. She says the speed limit is just 30 miles an hour there, which she calls “ridiculous, in my humble opinion.” But getting two tickets has changed her driving behavior, although perhaps not in the manner than the police hope for. Rather than slowing down, she says, “I don’t even go down Broadway anymore. I go down 22nd Street.”
Lilly isn’t home a lot, which makes it easier to avoid process servers. She didn’t have any problems with her first ticket—”I just threw it away and they never tried to serve me, as far as I know”—but when she got her second one, she nearly got busted when her adult son, who was living with her at the time, opened the door when the process server knocked. But once her son realized who was at the door, he denied knowing anything about Lilly and the process server left the house. (Lilly is quick to note that she did not coach him to do any such thing.)
Lilly noted a strange car outside her place a few times after that, so she took the precaution of driving down her alley and entering her house through the back door. Once, someone knocked at her door, but she just ignored it.
With her latest ticket, Lilly hasn’t seen anyone come by to try to serve her.
Lilly says she’s shared her experiences with friends who get tickets and told them that if they’re going to ignore the summons, they had better not answer the door if a stranger comes knocking. But she recalls that one friend slipped up.
“He couldn’t help himself,” Lilly says. “Someone came to his door and he answered it and he got served.”
There are other tricks to avoiding tickets (other than the most obvious, which include not speeding and not running red lights). You can register your car under the name of a business, which makes it harder for the authorities to match the traffic cam’s photo of you with your driver’s license. You can register the car you drive the most in your spouse’s name and the car your spouse drives the most in your name, and likewise try to foil proper identification of the driver. You can even wear a mask every time you’re behind the wheel, although that seems to be an extreme strategy. (In one infamous Maricopa County case, a driver racked up more than three dozen tickets while wearing a gorilla mask.)
And sometimes, you can actually beat the ticket in court, although it’s no easy thing, given that there’s fairly damning video evidence when you run a red light.
John Brown, a local insurance agent, was one of the few who managed to win in a court hearing. He got his ticket dismissed in City Court after he was able to establish that the process server did not properly serve his ticket.
Brown says the process server showed up at his house and tried to serve his 14-year-old daughter. His daughter answered the door but then shut it once she realized she didn’t recognize the process server, who proceeded to leave the ticket under Brown’s doormat and called it a legal service of the summons.
Brown fought the ticket on the grounds that his daughter was not old enough to properly be served—and even if she was, the process server failed to handle the process correctly. He said his daughter never told him about the ticket and he went on a vacation on the night it was served. By the time he found the summons, it had been buried under a big pile of leaves on his porch.
While he prevailed in court, Brown got so worked up about the ticket that his new hobby is battling photo-radar enforcement. He’s gathered news clips from around the country examining how companies and city councils have colluded in bribery scandals or adjusted the technology to unfairly bust drivers. He’s taken note of jurisdictions that have dumped the cameras. He’s hit the law library to determine what kind of loopholes exist to fight the tickets.
He doesn’t understand why conservative state lawmakers in Phoenix haven’t put a stop to the program, or why left-leaning Democrats on the Tucson City Council don’t find “ramrodding people through the court system for profit to be reprehensible.”
Brown admits that if he calculated his time by the hour, it would have been cheaper to just pay his tickets.
“My time is much more valuable than this,” he says. “I got this compulsive behavior from my mom.”
Brown’s mother used to fight city hall when she saw an injustice, such as poorly built homes or malfunctioning drinking fountains in schools.
“I’m not good at it,” he says with a laugh. “She would stick with it much longer than I would.”
But Brown is sticking with his campaign against the red-light cameras. He believes they are primarily a money-making scheme for the camera companies and a revenue-generator for the city, all hidden behind a veneer of traffic safety.
Tucson Police Department Capt. Robert Shoun, who works on the photo-enforcement beat, has heard all the complaints from people who dislike the cameras.
“In general terms, it seems like many folks are in favor of traffic enforcement until they become the subject of the enforcement,” Shoun says. “I pretty much equate the camera complaints right in line with the complaints that ‘The cop was hiding,’ or if the cop wasn’t hiding, ‘Why wasn’t the cop out there catching murderers and rapists instead of stopping me for traffic?’ I don’t think people are ever happy when they are being caught breaking the law, and the traffic laws are out there.”
Shoun says the cameras are on the job to improve the safety of the streets. He points to a number of factors: Traffic collisions have dropped at the monitored intersections from 137 in fiscal year 2011 to 85 in fiscal year 2013. And the fact that there are so few repeat offenders indicates that the cameras change driver behavior.
It’s also safer for cops, says Shoun, who has worked the traffic beat on a motorcycle. He says busting red-light runners on a motorcycle can be hazardous work because cops have to drive into heavy traffic to pursue traffic scofflaws.
Plus, there’s the ruthless efficiency of the cameras, which function 24-7 and bust nearly everyone who runs a red light. There’s no way that a police patrol could hope to duplicate that level of consistent enforcement.
Contrary to what some critics say, Tucson has not seen an increase in rear-end collisions as a result of drivers slamming on their brakes to avoid getting a ticket at the red-light intersections, according to Shoun.
On the revenue side, the city has come out ahead on camera enforcement, although the numbers aren’t that big, according to the city’s audit of the program. Last year, the city netted about $1.1 million from the cameras, once you subtract the payments to the contractor (which totaled more than $1.7 million) and the various costs to TPD and the courts. Over the five years that the cameras have been in business, the city has netted just under $6 million, while the contractor has been paid $5.3 million.
Another big winner: the state of Arizona, which has collected more than $6.2 million over the last five years through various surcharges.
Shoun says the priority of the program isn’t to raise money but to get drivers to be more careful on the roads.
“The bottom line is, drivers just need to learn to, No. 1, be observant of what the signals are showing,” says Shoun. “And No. 2, when the light turns yellow, instead of choosing to keep going for the gas, put your foot on that brake and stop.”
But no argument about safety is going to sway the opinion of photo-radar foes like Brown, who wants the cameras to “go away.”
Brown is getting his wish when it comes to the 11 cameras scattered around Pima County’s roads.
Last month, Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry recommended that the county let its contract with ATS expire in January 2014. Unless the Pima County Board of Supervisors votes to overrule his recommendation, the cameras will be coming down next year.
Huckelberry said the cameras were installed in 2009 to see if they would have any effect on how fast drivers were going on roads in unincorporated Pima County. But two recent studies from the county’s Transportation Department and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department concluded that while the rate of traffic accidents was on the decline, “they’re down more in locations that don’t have traffic cameras than they are at traffic-camera sites.”
The county’s fixed cameras did have an impact on drivers’ habits: At first, people started slowing down in areas where the cameras were placed. But, Huckelberry notes, “people got used to where they were, so they’d slow down when they got to them and then they’d speed back up.”
Most of the money from the cameras ended up going to either the state of Arizona or ATS.
“The state takes probably half of it right off the top,” Huckelberry says. “Then you have to pay half of what you have left to the vendor. Then we’re left with, I don’t know, $60 or something like that, and we have to incur all the court costs and process-serving costs that goes with it. So we probably net $300,000 or $400,000 a year out of it, but we also get the bad name that goes with it. It’s not worth the hassle and the adverse reaction from the public.”
Huckelberry said county officials considered getting mobile vans similar to the ones that the city uses, but Sheriff Clarence Dupnik balked.
“The sheriff wants no part of it,” Huckelberry said. “He said, ‘You can have one but don’t put our logo on it.’ Well, then, who’s going to issue the tickets?”
But city officials are not likely to follow the county’s lead. In this year’s City Council election, the cameras came up at a few candidate forums. All three Democrats who won re-election last week said they supported the cameras, although both Steve Kozachik and Karin Uhlich said that they’d like to see some changes in how intersections are defined to make the ticketing more fair to Tucson drivers.
“I agree with Frank Antenori and others that the definition of the intersection does need to be changed,” Uhlich said. “We shouldn’t prey on people’s confusion about intersections. It really needs some work.”
It’s a rare day when you see Uhlich agreeing with Antenori, the hard-charging conservative former state lawmaker who fought to restrict the cameras when he served in the Legislature.
“If they want to agree with me, hey, cool, thanks for the agreement,” Antenori said. “But the reality is, they’re agreeing, as I am agreeing, with adopting the standard used in 48 other states.”
The technical details are a bit complicated, but to break it down simply: Arizona law defines an intersection as the area defined by the curb lines. That’s different from other states, which follow what’s known as the Manual of National Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which calls for intersections to be defined as the area within the lines that appear before crosswalks.
As a result, Arizona intersections are smaller, so it’s easier to bust violators who would otherwise been considered to have been at least partially in the intersection before the light turned red.
Antenori’s bill to bring Arizona’s definition of intersections in line with Manual of National Uniform Traffic Control Devices passed the Legislature in 2012, but Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed it, saying that the “law enforcement community has been very clear that widening intersections will increase the possibility of collisions.”
The biggest critic of red-light cameras on the Tucson City Council is Ward 2 Democrat Paul Cunningham.
“I’m not a big fan of them,” says Cunningham, who got three tickets within a year at the intersection of 22nd Street and Wilmot Road.
Cunningham, who got the tickets before his appointment to the City Council in 2010, says the first two tickets came in the first week that the cameras were set up to issue tickets.
Cunningham said he separates his personal experience with the cameras from his opposition to them—”I thought it would be inappropriate for my personal experience to cloud my judgment”—but he adds that citizens can take a real beating from fines and points on their licenses.
“People can rack these things up pretty quick and they’re out $3,000 or $4,000,” Cunningham says. “It’s $300 for the ticket, plus going to traffic-safety school, plus whatever your insurance goes up. We have people who may lose their jobs over these tickets.”
Earlier this year, the City Council extended the yellow light at some intersections in an effort to compensate for the smaller intersections in Arizona law. As a result, Cunningham says, “We’re not giving away as many unfair tickets.”
While he doesn’t think he’d be able to persuade a majority of his colleagues to dump the program when the contract with ATS comes up for renewal, he would like to see a citizens initiative to get rid of the cameras.
“I’d love to see it put on the ballot and let the Tucson voters decide whether to keep the cameras,” Cunningham says. “I’d vote to get rid of them for sure.”
Cunningham isn’t the only one who would like to get rid of the cameras. Lilly, who will be dodging her process server for the rest of the month, says she is uncomfortable with the idea of being under government surveillance.
“On the one hand, I do see how it’s useful,” Lilly says. “People probably do drive slower if they know photo enforcement is around. I just grew up with Big Brother—1984 was a required read in my high school. I don’t think it’s right that they’re photographing us out there. It’s like that first step on the slippery slope.”
This article appears in Nov 14-20, 2013.
Thank you for covering the photo radar issue (and not in the Tom Danehy “If you’re not breaking the law, then you have nothing to worry about!” way).
The main problem I have with the RLCs is that–rather than trying to reduce red-light running via conventional means–the traffic engineering is actually being intentionally manipulated in order to create more “violators” in order to create more revenue. By redefining the intersection boundary (as Cunningham, Urlich, Antenori all agree on…so why hasn’t it happened? $$$) and by adding another half second to the yellow light length, red light “runners” would be so drastically reduced that the program would cease to be profitable and would thus be discontinued. The camera system relies trickery under the guise of “safety” to bill conscientious, prudent drivers for microsecond “violations.” That’s not right, and it’s one reason why the cameras need to go.
P.S. Sadly, there are even easier ways to beat photo radar tickets: be affluent enough to live in a gated community (process servers don’t bother trying to serve you–hi, classism!), drive someone else’s car, drive a motorcycle with a helmet/face guard, have out-of-state/country plates, have your DL address be a post office box. Just additional facets of the program’s implicit unfairness.
Random thoughts:
People generally don’t like surveillance cameras unless they are a victim and the camera can help their cause…1984 et al.
Each morning I hear announcements on the radio regarding traffic camera locations which seems to make them less effective if one can remember where they are located as they drive around town.
Some say violations and accidents are down where cameras a located, but then others say that is due to drivers avoiding those locations.
Also each morning on the radio I hear about accidents, hit and runs, etc.
The other day I saw a bicyclist on the ground at an intersection, hit by a car. I did not see the accident, so I do not know who was at fault. Being a bicyclist, this is my greatest fear.
Maybe “Lilly” or someone like her hit the cyclist. I should not assume, maybe the cyclist was at fault. No helmet, I see a lot of cyclists disobeying laws too.
It seems to me if you’ve had repeated violations as a result of cameras OR actual police officer stops, you are a menace to the road. I would hate to get hit by a car, but I would equally hate to hit someone in a car, bike or pedestrian situation.
I’ve slipped through yellow/redish lights, and been known to speed. But I am trying to be a better driver for many reasons including the health and safety of my fellow citizen. It isn’t that hard, I am saving fuel, and seem to enjoy the ride more. What the hell is the difference if you are 3 minutes late?
Jim:
Why didn’t you interview Mark Spear for this story? There you’d have a VERY informed person with a lot of background in traffic signal scams and enforcement.
I don’t give a flying fuck about what some cop who used to ride a motorcycle has to say about red light cameras. I refuse to vote for any tax increase for the city until TPD scraps their motorcycle unit. Frankly I would accept photo enforcement if it meant showing the motorcycle unit their walking papers. How about reassigning them as school resource officers, if everyone is concerned for the safety of our children.
If any part of your vehicle is in the intersection during any part of the yellow, you’re okay. The only hiccup is that people think the intersection begins at the second crosswalk line, which it does not. It starts where the four curbs intersect. Which in larger intersections is several feet past the crosswalk. The state needs to change the definition of the intersection, but efforts to do so have been blocked by those who don’t like cameras so they can point to the flawed definition as a reason to oppose them.
Thank you for this article! Just received my FIRST ever red-light camera ticket (Grant & Swan) and was ready to pay the $335 PLUS traffic school. Now more people will know about about the law. Thanks again!!!
1. Supporters love to say accidents have decreased in intersections where the cameras are, but have they decreased all over? I, for one, go out of my way to avoid the damn intersections because, while I’ve never intended to run a red light or speed through one, I know plenty of people who get caught because of those damn lines that they drew in the intersection to make it smaller. I’ve never seen anyone prove that accidents in the other streets have gone down as well. They could be decreasing in the targeted intersections because there’s fewer cars.
2. The article states that Arizona law describes an intersection by the curbs, but, again, what about the damn “Wait here” lines that they drew when they installed the cameras and, in some intersections, drew the line without telling people what it meant?
Another thing to note: They throw out citations issued to commercial vehicles because in Arizona, the ticket goes to the driver, not the registered owner and so, vehicles registered to commercial businesses that get caught are thrown out (or at least they used to be, when I wrote about such things for the Citizen).
I think that there should be an effort to increase awareness on safe driving and be proactive to remind/inform the entire community to change driving behavior.
The problem that exists is that drivers are taking risks and gambling when they drive instead of taking precautions to be safe. They are also taking precautions not to get caught for bad driving and not paying the consequences when they are caught.
Repeated PSA’s showing statistics of pedestrian, motorcycle, and biking accidents in the Old Pueblo could help. Another thing I am seeing on the roads is the distracted cell phone driver that is an accident waiting to happen. Folks have become so accustomed to “checking in” on these mobile devices it is a subconscious act. I think we need to see some real commercials showing what happens and how it isn’t worth the risk.
I happen to know that passengers could provide positive reinforcement when in a vehicle with a bad driver. How about a wake call from the child riding with a risk taker? They can be an advocate for their safety. That could be more effective than any motor cycle enforcer or camera.
The red light cameras are way too confusing. It seems like they were rolled out without anyone testing them. They’ve proceeded to catch a bunch of people who were just engaged in the time-honored Tucson tradition of getting out in the intersection because the know the trailing left arrow is coming.
And they said the speeding cameras would only take your picture if you’re speeding, but come to find out they are videotaping traffic all the time. That may help law enforcement, but it wasn’t explained that way to the public, so, again, it feels like surveillance and as if the government was lying to us.
I’d support most anything that reduced traffic injuries and fatalities, but these have been so abused, I say get rid of them.
Safety should be paramount; the easiest way to prevent red light running is to….have a leading left turn green light.
This type of solution is rarely seen on Tucson streets, think Camp Lowell and
Swan intersection. It’s simple safe an the evil “gummint” isn’t interested
/snarkies
Per the driver manual, I was correct to proceed through the intersection…I explained it to TPD. The refused to dismiss the charge.
I haven’t been able to afford the fine…and the traffic classes. TPD threatened to arrest me…I responded: “OK…tell me where to be and when (because, until I can pay the fine, I can’t pay the fine).” They have yet to come and take me to jail…
I avoid ALL businesses near these cameras…AND encourage others to do so.
I haven’t driven a car in the state of Arizona since…
The key is not only to avoid service, but make sure anyone at your home for any reason is aware that they are not authorized to act as your representative. Because I live alone and have a handyman who is sometimes around several days in a row I have made it clear that if anyone asks for me his response is that he is only a handyman working for a homeowner, does not reside at the residence, does not personally know me, and he is to decline agreeing to take any papers or even that he will see me in person or that he knows if or when I will be home. There are provisions for serving persons who also reside at the address.