Every year in the United States, more than 800 people are killed and more than 200,000 injured in accidents involving red light running. Of these casualties, many are passengers in other vehicles or are hapless pedestrians. Accidents engendered by red light running reach astonishing proportions, too, amounting to more than $150 billion in medical and emergency bills, productivity loss, and property destruction.
With such staggering figures, what have many cities opted to do? They set up photo enforcement.
How Photo Enforcement Works
Photo enforcement, while relatively new in the United States, has been in use in Europe and Australia for two decades. This is how it works. Cameras, positioned on a pole about 12 feet high and roughly 80 feet behind the intersection, are connected to wire sensors. These sensors are placed into cuts in the roadway. It is through these wires that electricity travels, creating an electromagnetic field as it does so. Vehicles running over the wire create an interference in the electromagnetic field, thereby triggering the camera.
How do cameras determine which cars and drivers to take pictures of? Another network of wires is...