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Editor,
[An open letter to the Signal Mountain Town Council]
The presentation Monday night by Mr. Kroske was a very slick, big company prepared, professional sales pitch. It is obvious that their technology is good but there are still many reported errors in these camera systems. But the wow factor of the technology nor the presentation should not be the influencing factor in your decision. You can get almost that level of detail on the Internet today with Google Earth if you want to be wowed by technology.
In searching the web there are a lot of sites documenting problems with this technology and quite a number of studies that say the cameras actually cause more accidents. But one web site I hope you will visit is www.photoradarscam.com. It cites the Federal Highway Administration’s “rules and recommendations” on setting speed limits and their reasons for doing so. They find that the slowest drivers cause the most accidents and the safest drivers are going over the posted limits by 7 to 10 percent. The way they say to set speed limits is to take the 85 percent percentile of the speed drivers are actually driving and round up to the next higher 5 mph.
As I said in my remarks to you last month, traffic will naturally flow at a safe speed consistent with the physical design of the road and the road side conditions. That certainly matches my assertion that you have the speed limits in the town set too low. If you set our speed limits by these FHA rules, we would have no “speeding problem” in our town.
My greatest disappointment with the meeting Monday night, is that you didn’t provide the answer I asked for in my correspondence to you nor to the young woman who asked, “Why, tell me why you are considering this.” If you will recall she said she had never attended a town meeting but wanted to know what was generating this consideration and asked if we had some big increases in accidents. The Mayor responded that Chief Veal had lots of statistics. If he does, why wasn’t that presented. The Mayor also cited the unfortunate accident this spring when a teenage girl was killed. The speed cameras would not have prevented that accident any more than our police force could have prevented the shooting of the chiropractor. People do things that police activity, even with cameras, can’t prevent.
I have had numerous people call or stop me in the last two days asking why didn’t I speak up at the meeting. Everything I wanted to say in opposition to the cameras was said by other people and I think you all know my feelings. The intrusive nature of the cameras, the problems they cause, and the negative image they produce, are not worth it for our community. Please take a minute and look at the above referenced web site.
Noah Long, Signal Mountain
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