The critical questions

Advertiser Staff

Q. What is the threshold above the speed limit that triggers a citation?

A. Now you've asked the $77 question.

State officials have been very careful to say that anyone exceeding the posted speed limit is "subject to a citation." But they also insist they've never said there is a "zero tolerance" policy for speeders.

If there is an official "threshold," the state can't — or won't — say so now. To do that would be to imply that it is OK to speed, they say.

So officially the state neither confirms nor denies the presence of a citation threshold.

At one point in December, however, the head of the state Transportation Department said that "as a practical matter the citation threshold will be set around the 10 percent margin of error," a statement that has not been repeated since.

Meanwhile, the company contract proposal to the state called for citations to be issued whenever someone was going 11 mph or more over the speed limit. However, we're told that standard is not actually being used today.

Confused? So are we.

Our best educated guess on this matter is that tickets start getting issued somewhere between 5 and 10 mph over the speed limit.

Just don't quote us when you get to court.

Q. Who is running the program?

A. The state signed a three-year contract with a private company called Affiliated Computer Services Inc. to operate the system. The company has set up the program and hired all the people to run it.

ACS is a Dallas-based company with 30,000 employees and $2 billion in revenue last year.

The company, which operates many different types of financial and administrative computer systems for private and government enterprises, got into the traffic camera business last year when it acquired the IMS company from Lockheed Martin Corp.

ACS has about 55 photo enforcement contracts in the United States and Canada, making it by far the largest operator of such photo systems in North America, generating more than $300 million annually for ACS.

Q. What are the objections?

A. "The problem is that everybody has a different problem with the program," one politician said. "Everybody dislikes something else."

Among the objections we've heard are:

• Insurance rates are going to go up if I get a ticket.
• It's Big Brotherism.
• The cameras violate my right to privacy.
• It's just a moneymaker for the state.
• Law enforcement should be in the hands of police, not a private company.
• There's no chance to face your accuser in court.
• Sometimes it's safer to speed up; the cameras don't leave any room for discretion.
• The tickets go to the car owner, not the driver.
• The camera's flash at night can blind a driver.
• Since the camera operators get paid for each ticket, there's the potential that they'll abuse the system in the name of profit.
• Drivers are spending more time looking at their speedometer than the road.
• There's no hard evidence that the cameras actually reduce serious accidents; in some cases, they cause more accidents.

Q. If there's so much opposition to these cameras, how come the state is going ahead with the program?

A. First and foremost, for safety.

In the past five years, 73 people died at Hawai'i intersections when a driver ran a red light. More than 260 people were killed and 12,500 injured in crashes involving speeding here since 1991, the state says.

That's reason enough to try a new kind of law enforcement, officials say.