EDITORIAL
Rebuild traffic program from the ground up

The state's 7-week-old effort to nab speeders and red-light runners via traffic cameras has become such a comedy of errors that we see no alternative but to call it quits and start over from scratch.

Judges are throwing out tickets because they fail to say the camera operators are certified to run the equipment. As a result, the state Department of Transportation has suspended the program as it rushes to fix the technical flaw. The DOT and the judiciary are blaming one another for the mistake.

Meanwhile, motorists who are contesting their citations are still required to show up in court and make the case that the citation form is invalid. Those who don't appear will be found guilty by default and fined.

Why not give up the charade, refund the paid tickets, cancel the outstanding ones and devise a new system that the public can buy into?

By most indications, this one has failed, yet its supporters refuse to concede defeat and keep oiling the broken machine.

Senate President Robert Bunda says, "I think what the state should do right now is to just disband this particular project and start all over again ... and implement a program that is better than it is today."

He's right. We'd like nothing more than to see a program that deters reckless speeding and red-light running. But the system we have right now is a house of cards flapping in the winds of public furor and political opportunism.

The state should learn from this experiment and get its best and brightest to create a credible deterrent to speeding and red-light running.