Driving down Highway 380 under the predatory eye of hidden speed cameras, I always feel like a prairie dog about to snatched up by a hawk. I look at the speedometer and slow down. Will I get away with it or will I get one of those automated citations in the mail?
A new Iowa law now requires local governments to apply for permits for their lucrative speed cameras.
Last year, Davenport issued 43,452 tickets which raked in a total of $1.4 million. LeClaire issued 62,229 tickets for $1.7 million. Chad Alleger, mayor of Prairie City told Iowa Public Radio their speed camera helped pay for a new library and complained that the city’s permit to continue using their camera has been denied. “The purpose is to make our community safer, so I don’t understand why you would deny the communities a way to do that,” he said.
Mayor Alleger isn’t the only official confused that the permits appeared to be issued arbitrarily. It’s like that scene in the movie LA Story where weatherman Harris K. Telemacher, played by Steve Martin tells his secretary, “Hold some of my calls.”
The Des Moines Register reports that Iowa denied 44 percent of the 348 speed camera requests. The city of Cedar Rapids was approved for six of 15 requests. Marion was approved for 29 of 59 requests. So, why not deny all requests—or none of them?
The Iowa Department of Transportation wants to use speed cameras as a means of last resort. If it is not practical to monitor a road or
intersection with real, live police officers, then a traffic camera may be necessary. But now, signs are required, announcing that the cameras are in use. Citations will only be issued to drivers going at least ten miles over the speed limit. Tickets are not to exceed $75 and the money must be used for road improvements and not simply to enrich the city’s general budget.
It sounds like the IDOT is trying to make the system more equitable. The public hates speed cameras. There are many stories of errors in which an innocent driver is stuck paying a fine for someone else’s car or when the camera isn’t properly calibrated and claims a driver is going 80 mph when she was only doing 60. Contesting errors is so difficult and time-consuming, most drivers don’t bother. They simply pay the fines. Also, speed cameras are creepy, spying on you, invading your privacy.
There you are minding your own business driving down 380, going 70-ish, singing along with Taylor Swift’s All Too Well on the radio (the really sad 10-min-ute version) at the top of your lungs and crying your eyes out. Suddenly, you picture some sweaty, middle-aged city worker in a dingy cubical chuckling as he watches you blubber on his monitor, indifferent to the tragedy of young love and being late for work. He takes a swig of his lukewarm Mountain Dew reaches for the red button on his keyboard that says “VIOLATION”.
Life can be so cruel.