It's been a busy year for Maryland speed camera. New speed cameras and new camera programs are popping up all over the state, with camera vendors and local governments are all scrambling for their piece of what is now an over $77million per year statewide industry (and growing). Here is our 2011 year in review:
1) Speed camera vendor ACS State and Local Solutions (A division of Xerox Corporation) was revealed to be running "Astroturf" website, claiming to be grass roots organizations supporting speed cameras in Baltimore County and Howard County, when in fact they were started by a public relations company hired by ACS. ACS revealed their affiliation with the websites only after the association was revelead by Patch.com. The campaign nevertheless proved successful, with the Baltimore County County voting to expand their program and Howard County voting to begin a new speed camera program.
2) A legislative change, which would have required that "workzone speed cameras" only be deployed in workzones where there are actual workers, was rejected by the state legislature. Current law permits "workzone" cameras to be used "regardless of whether workers are present", and many if not most of the tickets issued by SHA cameras so far have been issued when no work was taking place. The SHA this year began deploying cameras on I-270, in a zone where the speed limit is reduced by 10mph, and on the DC Beltway (495).
3) Legislation was proposed which would have removed all police oversight from the issuance of speed camera citations. StopBigBrotherMD.org argued that this change would increase the likelyhood of errors and a reduce accountability by local governments. The requirement that sworn police approve citations was one of the main arguments made by camera supporters that there is an adequate level of review before citations are sent. The proposal which was rejected but the City of Rockville is lobbying to revive it, along with the city of Laurel (who initially proposed the change in 2011), and by the City of Gaithersburg.
4) Claims that all photo citations are currently inspected by police were questioned. In one incident, the City of Baltimore issued 2000 red light camera tickets which had been "approved" by a police officer who had been deceased for months.
In another incident, Baltimore ticketed the wrong vehicle. The citations in fact did not clearly show the vehicle at all, and the plate number was not clear, indicating that citation review procedures apparently do not always include looking at the citation images. The ticketed motorist was forced to spend months getting the bogus citation removed from his record after this registration was flagged by the city.
5) It was revealed that speed cameras provided by speed camera vendor ACS to the SHA's freeway workzone camera program, to Baltimore County, and other jurisdictions all failed to meet a requirement that they be certified by an "independent calibration laboratory", instead the cameras were all certified by the vendor. Baltimore County was unable to answer questions about the testing of their cameras at the time of our inquiry. After StopBigBrotherMD.org exposed the fact to the state legislature and members of the press, ACS arranged to find a company willing to re-certify the devices.... meeting the letter of the law only after the devices had already been in use for over a year and issued hundreds of thousands of citations. Even after that, the devices were still only tested according to a "manufacturer specification", testing the frequency the devices transmit on, and were not certified by the IACP (a much higher standard that was a requirement of the SHA's rfp for speed monitoring systems).
6) Some jurisdictions in Maryland are engaging in the practices of issuing red light camera tickets to vehicles which come to a full stop but are past the white 'stop line'. The practice has been defended by Prince George's County authorities. Other jurisdictions have been issuing red light tickets for other types of "technical fouls" including rolling right turns. Public relation campaigns by camera vendors and local governments supporting red light cameras almost always focus on 'straight through' red light running, despite the fact that when 'technical fouls' are ticketed only a minority of tickets are for actual red light running.
7) The consumer advocacy group USPIRG released a report cautioning on the privatization of law enforcement associated with automated enforcement. The report cited the effects of turning law enforcement responsibilities over to for-profit companies, typically under contract arrangements which incentive them to maximize the number of tickets issued (a common practice in Maryland). It also warned of the political clout camera companies have accumulated through lobbying activities to increase the revenue potential of cameras. The report also warned that private vendors can conceal information from the public since they are not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.
8) There has been an ongoing dispute over the accuracy of speed cameras built by Optotraffic, a division of Sigma Space Corporation. A business owner in Forest Heights successfully contested several citations issued to vehicles run by his business using time-distance calculations from citation images to show that the vehicles could not have been traveling the speed shown on the citations. Another motorist presented electronic evidence recorded by a "carchip" showing his vehicle had not been traveling the speed on the citation issued by an Optotraffic camera in College Park. Other motorists made their claims publicly in letters to the editor. Forest Heights responded to the charges by plagiarizing an earlier response from the town of Cheverly where similar claims had been made earlier. There were also frequent denials of requests for information about camera programs under the Maryland Public Information act, camera logs which appear to have been falsified or filled out weeks after the fact, and motorists who tried to contest citations but were unable to get hearings for months or in some cases over a year. In addition, it was discovered that Optotraffic had removed information from citations, specifically lowering the precision of the timestamps from 3 decimal places to 1, after motorists started using the timestamped images to challenge speed readings.
Optotraffic continued to deny the errors, and public officials in Prince George's county remained unconcerned about the issue, which the county having already selected Optotraffic as their vendor (a company which had made thousands of dollars in contributions to the campaign and inauguration of the county executive.) Prince George's County unveiled a plan to deploy 72 new speed camera sites, with proposed locations including newly minted school zones created solely for speed camera use. One of the new cameras experienced technical glitches shortly after going online, but nevertheless the first few cameras pulled in $527,000 worth of fines in the first month.
9) After the county program started, Prince George's county courts eventually stopped hearing arguments about accuracy all together. One motorist contesting a citation from Forest Heights was arrested and throw in a detention cell merely for stating "I was not speeding" in court. Another Prince George's County Judge threw out the presumption of innocence completely, stating to an entire courtroom full of defendants prior to hearing any evidence that "The only defense that the court is going to accept if you were not the driver of the vehicle" and that the court would not consider any evidence questioning the accuracy of the devices.
10) Eventually the town of Cheverly disclosed documents PROVING that errors with Optotraffic cameras were real . The town's contract with Optotraffic was ended after the vendor failed to respond to questions from the town about errors, including cameras "recording" a bicycle going 57mph, "invisible vehicles" traveling 76mph, "false triggers" caused by moisture in the air, and "false speed readings for vehicles that have an irregular size such as buses and trucks with ladder racks." Optotraffic cameras are still being used in numerous municipalities, issuing thousands of tickets per month.
Given the rate at which automated enforcement is growing in the state, we're sure 2012 will be even more "interesting" than 2011. We'll be all over it.
Blog Archive
-
►
2019
(3)
- ► November 2019 (1)
- ► August 2019 (1)
- ► February 2019 (1)
-
►
2018
(10)
- ► December 2018 (1)
- ► October 2018 (1)
- ► August 2018 (1)
- ► April 2018 (1)
- ► February 2018 (4)
- ► January 2018 (2)
-
►
2017
(20)
- ► December 2017 (1)
- ► September 2017 (2)
- ► August 2017 (4)
- ► March 2017 (2)
- ► February 2017 (5)
- ► January 2017 (5)
-
►
2016
(21)
- ► December 2016 (4)
- ► November 2016 (3)
- ► October 2016 (1)
- ► April 2016 (2)
- ► March 2016 (2)
- ► February 2016 (4)
- ► January 2016 (3)
-
►
2015
(39)
- ► December 2015 (2)
- ► October 2015 (1)
- ► September 2015 (5)
- ► August 2015 (3)
- ► April 2015 (1)
- ► March 2015 (5)
- ► February 2015 (5)
- ► January 2015 (5)
-
►
2014
(82)
- ► December 2014 (4)
- ► November 2014 (3)
- ► October 2014 (3)
- ► September 2014 (9)
- ► August 2014 (6)
- ► April 2014 (4)
- ► March 2014 (10)
- ► February 2014 (14)
- ► January 2014 (12)
-
►
2013
(102)
- ► December 2013 (11)
- ► November 2013 (10)
- ► October 2013 (9)
- ► September 2013 (5)
- ► August 2013 (7)
- ► April 2013 (7)
- ► March 2013 (14)
- ► February 2013 (6)
- ► January 2013 (8)
-
►
2012
(66)
- ► December 2012 (6)
- ► November 2012 (4)
- ► October 2012 (9)
- ► September 2012 (8)
- ► August 2012 (8)
- ► April 2012 (2)
- ► March 2012 (8)
- ► February 2012 (7)
- ► January 2012 (7)
-
▼
2011
(88)
- ▼ December 2011 (3)
- ► November 2011 (4)
- ► October 2011 (7)
- ► September 2011 (5)
- ► August 2011 (7)
- ► April 2011 (6)
- ► March 2011 (9)
- ► February 2011 (10)
- ► January 2011 (10)
-
►
2010
(69)
- ► December 2010 (6)
- ► November 2010 (4)
- ► October 2010 (10)
- ► September 2010 (9)
- ► August 2010 (4)
- ► April 2010 (4)
- ► March 2010 (6)
- ► February 2010 (4)
- ► January 2010 (6)
-
►
2009
(58)
- ► December 2009 (4)
- ► November 2009 (6)
- ► October 2009 (9)
- ► September 2009 (6)
- ► August 2009 (1)
- ► April 2009 (5)
- ► March 2009 (6)
- ► February 2009 (6)
- ► January 2009 (7)
-
►
2008
(17)
- ► December 2008 (4)
- ► November 2008 (4)
- ► October 2008 (1)
- ► September 2008 (1)
- ► August 2008 (2)
- ► March 2008 (2)

Our Top Stories
- Rockville Falsely Accuses School Bus of Speeding
- Montgomery County Has Secret Speed Camera Committee -- Press and Critics Not Welcome
- Montgomery Speed Camera "OmBudsman" Won't Answer Questions
- Montgomery County Issues Erroneous Tickets
- College Park Cited Stationary Bus for Speeding
- Montgomery County ATEU Defends Culture of Secrecy
- How Two-Faced Triple-A Gave Maryland Speed Cameras
- "Secret" Baltimore Speed Camera Audit Found 10% Error Rate
- Speed Camera Reform Act Just a Big Fat Lie
- Court Rules Against Morningside on Public Records Access
- Speed Camera Company Celebrates "Bounty System" Loophole
- Montgomery County Steals Lanes for Expensive Bus Program
- Wicomico County Teachers Say Camera is Not Accurate
- Montgomery Council President Rice Racked Up Tickets
- Circuit Court Rules Innocence is a Defense, Rejects "Snitch" Requirement
- Baltimore Ends Camera Contract, Moves to Hides Records
- Montgomery Scamera Boss Lies About Red Light Camera "Warning Flashes"
- Montgomery County Camera Boss Blocks Public From Secret Meeting
- Salisbury Records Show Calibration Lapses, Sorry No Refunds!!
- Speed Camera Accuracy Questioned in Morningside
- Attorny General Gansler Depicted as "Reckless Passenger"
- Morningside Deployed Cameras Despite County Denial
- Morningside Admits Maintaining No Calibration Records, Doesn't Operate Own Cameras
- ACLU Documents Mass Tracking of Motorists By License Plate Scannrs
- Brekford Demands Tribute to See Calibration Records
- Access To Brekford Calibration Records Stalled in Salisbury, Morningside
- Public and Private Lobbyists Worked to Kill Speed Camera Reform
- Montgomery County Speed Camera Transforms Toyota into Dodge
- Montgomery County Boasts Error Rate "Under Ten Percent"
- Speed Camera Company Collects Dirt on Competitors
- Woman Gets 3 Tickets from DC Without Going There
- Legislature Raises Gas Tax
- Laurel, Hagerstown Circumvent Calibration Requirement
- Speed Camera Calibration Fails To Ensure Accuracy
- Speed Camera Programs Flout Sunshine Law
- Xerox Admits 5% Error Rate For Speed Camera Tickets
- Baltimore Cites Motionless Car For Speeding
- O'Malley Says Speed Camera Bounties Are Illegal
- Baltimore Ticketed Innocent Delivery Vehicle: Documents Prove Speed Camera Error
- Rockville Sees Huge Surge in Red Light Violations
- Trucking Company Challenges Accuracy of Baltimore Citations: Videos Prove Speed Camera Errors
- Speed Camera Salesman Caught Speeding AGAIN
- Riverdale Park Defends Forgery of Police Signatures
- High Court Rules Local Governments Above the Law
- Riverdale Park Allowed Civilians to Forge Police Approvals
- Baltimore Speed Camera Issues Ticket to the Dead
- Statewide Speed Cameras Now a $77Million Per Year Industry
- PG County Court Presumes All Defendants Guilty
- Town Releases Documents Proving Errors With Optotraffic Cameras
- Man arrested for asserting innocence in speed camera hearing
- Optotraffic Representative Caught Speeding
- Driver Uses Carchip to Challenge Optotraffic Camera
- Deceased Baltimore Cop Signs 2000 Citations
- Montgomery County Denies Right To Face Camera Operator In Court
- ACS Buys Steak Dinners For Lawmakers
- Baltimore City Issues Hundreds of Tickets in Error
- Baltimore Writes Speed Camera Revenues Into Budget Before Cameras Approved
- Camera Mistakenly Accuses Driver of 100mph Rampage
- Montgomery County Scamera Contract Includes Massive PR Campaign
- Optotraffic Investigates Possible Speed Camera Errors
- Speed Camera Legislation Attracts Lobbyists
- Sykesville Voters Overturn Speed Cameras in Referendum
- Traffic Engineering Techniques Out-perform Speed Cameras
- Transportation Planning Board Unveils Plan to Track and Tax Drivers
