Allow cameras at intersections

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This was a disappointing move, especially considering the committee passed similar legislation last year that died before the full Senate could act on it. Observe any major intersection in the Upstate and you will quickly see why such legislation is needed. Drivers run red lights with reckless abandon.

Intersections, after all, are exceptionally dangerous. They are where 40 percent of all accidents occur. Red-light running is blamed for many of those accidents: 229,000 in 2002 in which 950 people were killed and 200,000 were injured, according to a recent Greenville News story. As Greenville Police Chief Willie Johnson said in pushing for this bill, "At certain intersections in this city, when the traffic light turns red, two or three vehicles continue through."

Chief Johnson and his counterparts in other cities in this state do not have the officers needed to observe intersections and write tickets to those who pay no attention to red lights. Drivers know this. That's why so many of them have come to think a yellow light means speed up and a red light means hold your breath and dart through the intersection.

Twenty states and the District of Columbia already have cameras at some intersections that photograph drivers who run a red light. The programs vary, but essentially a camera is activated to take multiple photographs of cars going through a traffic light after it has turned red. The city then mails the ticket to the driver along with the photos of the offense or a link to a Web site where the pictures can be found.

The law proposed in South Carolina would have allowed fines up to $100 and the offense wouldn't go on the driver's record or be used to raise insurance rates.

Senate critics of the bill had weak arguments to back their opposition: Cities would harass drivers and use the red-light cameras to shore up their local budgets, they claimed, and the system wouldn't guarantee that the rights of drivers would be protected.

Overlooked by those senators is the danger law-abiding drivers and their passengers face every day at intersections in South Carolina. People who have no regard for the law, and not much more for the lives and safety of other people, know that understaffed police departments cannot properly monitor our city streets.

There has been an observable decline in the respect for traffic laws over the past few decades. Intersection cameras could be a valuable tool in the hands of law enforcement agencies fighting red-light running. This bill should be resurrected.