Red Light Redux: Caught on Camera

By Mark Boyer in Miscellaneous on Mar 7, 2008 9:27PM

[Ed note: We're going to break from our usual style here. Take it away, Mark!]

A few days ago, I wrote about the new red light cameras that'll be coming to a street corner near you. With a false sense of security, I jokingly referred to them as "money makers," thinking that I was somehow beyond their panoptic gaze.

Big mistake.

Two days later, I was slapped with a hundred dollar ticket of my own. Call it karma, or Mayor Daley's special form of divine retribution – whatever it is, these $100 tickets fucking suck, and there are going to be a lot more of them in years to come.

The only cool part of it – as several commenters have already noted – is that you get to see photos and a video of your infraction. That's me up there, in the beat-up Honda, gunning through the salted-up intersection of Ashland and Division on January 21st at about 2 P.M. And after countless replays of the video, I admit that I burned the red light, and it looks like one of those situations in which, when encountered with a changing yellow light, I chose to accelerate through.

For the record, I respect the law and do believe that running red lights is reckless behavior.

Another aspect of the ordeal that slightly assuaged my frustration was my discovery of Photoenforced, a site that maps red light cameras for other drivers. After getting the ticket, I submitted the intersection where I was nailed to the site, and although they still haven't added it to their map, I get some satisfaction from knowing that people are going to the trouble of mapping the camera locations for the rest of us.

The only thing I'm wondering now is whether or not that delivery truck in the above photos got served with a ticket also, because it sure looks like he's running the light too.