Straight Talk Law Blog: The Case For Red Light Cameras By Seattle Personal Injury Lawyer Jason Epstein

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Red light cameras – which record snapshots of motorists running red lights and enable the police to ticket them without having personally witnessed the traffic violation – have been in use for over a decade, with a great deal of controversy surrounding their usage.

Many citizens and lawmakers alike have accused local communities of using the cameras as municipal ATM’s, to spit out more money from fines without hiring more manpower. They also have targeted the cameras as untrustworthy and even the cause of more car accidents.

A new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has what I consider to be a pretty good final verdict on the cameras – they save lives. You can read more about what the study has to say in my new article, “Red Light Cameras Save Lives,” – but the bottom line is that the cameras have prevented hundreds of wrongful deaths, not to mention an untold amount of personal injury cases.

Here in the state of Washington, however, where I practice in the Seattle area as a personal injury attorney, the debate over red light cameras rages on. Initiatives have been filed in Bellingham, Longview, Monroe and Wenatchee to require public votes on the usage of the cameras as well as placing limits on the amount of fines allowable for traffic violations caught by the devices. State Representative Chris Hurst is also sponsoring legislation that has similar objectives in mind.

To be fair, all of these efforts were begun before the results of the IIHS were released on February 1^st of this year. I’m hopeful, now that the enormous safety benefits of the red light cameras are fully proven and documented, that the red light camera rhetoric will cool down and their usage can continue unabated. We can argue the particulars of that usage, but not the life-saving results.

Please feel free to visit my website at www.straighttalklaw.com , where you can order free books on personal injury and wrongful death lawyers, Washington auto and motorcycle accidents, auto insurance, and other valuable legal information, offered as a public service by myself and my law practice in Seattle, Washington.