EDITORIAL
Van cam sequel must be better than original

Racing and other traffic menaces have spurred City Councilman Nestor Garcia to suggest creating a spinoff of the infamous van cam program, a system of mobile high-tech cameras intended to nab speeders and red-light runners.

He wants to see a very limited program that would be operated by law enforcement on Honolulu's freeways during the overnight police shift.

And we endorse this general principle, given the rash of speeding fatalities.

But before we resurrect any kind of van cam program, let's take a trip down memory lane and recap what went wrong with the last one so we can do it right this time.

For starters, the 2002 DOT program was operated by a private company that was paid $29 for every ticket, which presented an incentive for the van cams to work overtime, spewing out the maximum number of tickets.

Indeed, within three months, the Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services nabbed close to 19,000 speeders, issuing on average 6,000 tickets a month, or some 200 a day. Moreover, most tickets were issued to motorists going less than 10 mph over the speed limit.

Judges didn't think much of the program. They threw out van cam tickets because they failed to say that the camera operators were certified to run the equipment, and they also dismissed tickets for motorists driving within the 10-mph-over-the-limit threshold.

Meanwhile, the city prosecutor's office quit pursuing van cam cases after a district judge ruled that the state could not legally presume a registered owner of a cited vehicle was also the driver.

Oh, and they never did hook up traffic cameras to catch red-light runners, an arguably more dangerous practice than driving less than 10 miles over the speed limit. So if the van cam program must be resurrected — and there's a good case to be made for that— let's learn from those mistakes.

And if it eventually expands to catch red-light runners, which it should, allow first for a full debate over where precisely in the intersection a vehicle must be to trigger a red-light photo citation. The cameras might also be a useful tool in combatting another growing concern in Honolulu: pedestrian injuries and fatalities.

"Return of the Van Cam" could bomb as a sequel if it's as poorly planned and executed as the original. Done right, it could make our streets safer.