ISLAND VOICES
Thinking fuzzy on enforcing the law
By Doug Carlson
Doug Carlson is a Honolulu public relations specialist.
Photo enforcement of traffic laws to crack down on dangerous driving has produced remarkably fuzzy thinking among advocates and opponents alike.
Some of the worst was by the state Department of Transportation when van cams were introduced in 2001, but it continues today among politicians who owe us better leadership in the fight to reduce traffic deaths.
I had a close-up view of the van cam project as a consultant to ACS, the much-maligned traffic camera vendor. At an early task force meeting, a company representative and I listened incredulously as the DOT's program manager said even 1 mph over the speed limit merited a citation.
That kind of fuzzy thinking doomed the program from the start. Even setting the threshold at 6 mph over the limit — the minimum speed at which the state would break even after ACS's per-ticket fee — didn't pass the common-sense test.
The advocates learned from that failed experiment and now say they want to nab only the worst of the speeders, as well as red-light runners. Most of the fuzziness today comes from photo enforcement's opponents.
Rep. Kika Bukoski, for example, says, "If this goes through, there's going to be a camera on every pole watching us. I don't appreciate people taking a picture of me (Advertiser, March 28)."
This is either classic fuzzy thinking or a deliberate effort to confuse the issue. Camera-shy politicians like Bukoski and other drivers needn't worry about being photographed at "every pole" — and certainly not at the few camera-equipped poles unless they run red lights or drive at excessive speed that endangers others.
At the city level, Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi supports photo enforcement at intersections, but she's against using it to catch speeders out of concern for their loss of civil liberties. That's great fuzzy thinking.
People are dying, but a perceived threat to personal privacy is more important to some of our leaders. They need to be asked: How do you justify the loss of a life in the defense of a lawbreaker's personal freedom?
