Smile, lawbreakers!
Some of us are old enough to remember when drivers stopped for red lights. Pittsburgh Councilman Bill Peduto wants to encourage a revival of this quaint custom by installing cameras at key intersections. You run a red light, you get a $100 ticket in the mail and a souvenir photo.

This is hardly cutting-edge stuff. Cameras for red lights and speeding have been around for decades and are used in about 200 American cities, including Philadelphia and Cleveland. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, drivers running red lights are responsible for 22 percent of traffic accidents and kill about 800 people a year.

The eyes of us are upon Texas

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The city of Austin is one step ahead of us. It begins a 60-day trial red-light program next month. Scofflaws would get photos of themselves transgressing, but no tickets during the tryout. The Central Texas ACLU opposes the cameras as an invasion of privacy. Some comments from the Statesman-American online forum:

"A zero-tolerance (electronic) cop on every corner. This is fascism."

"This is not about 'big brother.' This is ONLY about your breaking the law."

"I have a car exactly like my neighbors, who I cannot stand. I will be running red light cameras all day long with a copy of their plates on my car. It's going to be like Christmas :)."

"Increase yellow light cycle times at intersections with high accident rates. The Texas Transportation Institute shows an extra second can yield a 40 per cent collision reduction."

"I walk and have been nearly hit by red-light runners many times. Are rights only for people driving huge SUVs?"

"Cameras? That's soooo 1984. Every car should be required to have a GPS receiver with an ID chip installed. No speeding, no red light running, no traffic violations without a hefty fine. Plus you won't have to get pulled over and be treated like a jerk for every infraction. You'll just get a nice letter in the mail."

"I think we should implant GPS chips in every person, not the car. We shouldn't ticket the car, it's the driver at fault."

"A camera caught my daughter running a red light in Brooklyn. Since they don't know who the driver is, the ticket stays off your record, which is fair. It was a $40 fine, but for $40 you get a picture of your car, which you can use when you want to sell it."

"It certainly gets you gun-shy at lights. You do not know where they are. So in a way I guess they work."

"Years back everyone said the police should be doing more important work instead of spending so much time on traffic control. Now we have technology to do this, and guess what? All the whiners are raising sand about their privacy."

"I reside in D.C., and it has cut down on the number of pedestrians being hit. I was hit by a van that ran a red light."

"The Washington Post did an investigation, which showed that these cameras do nothing but beef up the money collected by jurisdictions. In Washington D.C. alone, $32 million in fees have been collected. Worse yet, accidents have actually increased where red light cameras are installed. The conclusion is that the cameras do not deter behavior at all."

"The way people tailgate sometimes it's safer to go on the yellow, because if you stop you'll get hit from behind."

"10 minutes after taxpayers are porked for these, the same maker will be marketing hi tech covers for plates that will not photograph. Low-tech guys will use black tape to change 1 to 7 or 3 to 8."

"Yes to cameras. Anything to upset the ACLU."

Just shut up and pay
In Chicago, the vast majority of the 210,000 people who received red-light camera tickets between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31 last year simply paid the $90 fine without protest. But of the ones who tried to beat the rap -- some 6,000 people -- 90 percent failed, the Sun-Times reported. People who contest parking tickets usually fare better. Red-light violations caught on camera are especially difficult to challenge, since vehicle owners can be held responsible even if they weren't driving, and the evidence tends to be conclusive.

Meanwhile, in Europe
American cities tend to use cameras for red-light violations, but Europe seems to favor speed cameras. Britain has 6,000 of them. Apparently, many people are not too thrilled about that. They have sprayed the cameras with paint; knocked them over; covered them in festive wrapping paper and garbage bags; shot, hammered and firebombed them. Vivid examples can be seen on the Web site of a vigilante group called Motorists Against Detection, speedcam.co.uk.

The government says the cameras have reduced the number of speeders at the sites by 31 percent and the number of people killed or seriously injured by 42 percent. On the other hand a camera in Wales had to be removed because it was causing five-mile traffic slowdowns.

Lifting a finger
This fall in Sweden, a man tried to beat the system by speeding past the camera with no license plate while giving it the finger at no extra charge. He did this three times, clocked at 76, 77 and 82 mph -- enough to lose his license. The lack of plates presented a challenge but police noticed that the offenses occurred on Sunday nights. So, they camped out and got him, according to Sweden's English language Web site, thelocal.se. He did not raise a finger on this occasion.