“They’re unconstitutional as all get out.” At least, that’s what one Georgia sheriff said about school zone speed cameras.
Not only that does he say they’re unconstitutional, but Sheriff Gary Long of Butts County also said that the endgame with these cameras is revenue, not public safety, and he refuses to let them run in his county during his tenure. He even goes as far as to say they’re unreliable.
“The companies will tell you all the police departments or the sheriff’s office, they’re overseeing every ticket written. Well, I can assure you they’re not because I got a ticket from a vehicle I sold in ’05,” he told WMAZ in Macon, Georgia.
He’s right about that. Last week, my father got a citation in the mail, stating that he’d been driving 42 miles per hour in a school zone on February 25. But he didn’t even leave the house that day. I was driving a car registered to him, so technically, I was the one in the wrong. If I was in the wrong.
I’m a pretty cautious driver, to the point that I often get made fun of for it. The timing on the citation is within a few minutes of the end of the school zone reduced speed hours. I would not have gone 17 miles over the speed limit intentionally, and that particular area has no flashing lights, just signage on one side of the road. If I was wrong, I’m willing to admit that and take the blame, but had I been dealing with an actual police officer, we could have talked it over.
The citation was a first for me, so I showed it to some friends, including our editor here at PJ Media, Chris Queen, who is also a Georgia resident. “At least you only only got a warning,” he said, adding, “I had to pay a $50 fine last month for the same thing.” But here’s the catch: Chris was driving in the Gwinnett County school zone but not during the posted hours for reduced speed, and he said that the “time was clearly marked on the ticket.”
Another friend told me she got one in the same school zone where I got mine. Another told me that one of her relatives got multiple tickets on the same day.
Another friend, who works in local politics, pointed out that the actual paper citation doesn’t actually meet current legal standards as far as she could tell when one of her relatives received one. She also mentioned that local businesses are receiving countless citations when their workers drive fleet vehicles through these school zones throughout the day because the drivers aren’t getting ticketed; the companies are, and it’s become a big problem.
The only good news, I suppose, is that camera traffic citations do not go on your driving record and do not impact your car insurance rates, which kind of reinforces what Long says about them being more about revenue than public safety.
But it gets worse. Yesterday, Georgia-based talk radio host Erick Erickson pointed out that evidence suggests that these cameras are racially discriminatory and are only being placed in neighborhoods that are predominantly white. He also stated that “In one county, the local government has issued $8 million in tickets, with many of those tickets falling outside the reduced speed school zone times.”
“In most areas of the state, the schools where cameras are placed are set back from the road, have no sidewalks, and are inaccessible to pedestrians,” he added. I can attest to that. You can barely even see the school in the zone where I received my citation.
Luckily, there are two bills currently before the Georgia Senate focused on this issue.
Georgia House Bill 225, which is sponsored by Rep. Dale Washburn (R-144th District), along with several other Republicans and one Democrat, seeks to “repeal all laws relative to enforcement of speeding violations in school zones through the use of automated traffic enforcement safety devices,” as well as to “prohibit a local governing body or law enforcement agency from entering into or renewing a contract that provides for enforcement of laws relative to speeding violations in school zones through the use of automated traffic enforcement safety devices.”
The other bill, HB 651, which is sponsored by Rep. Alan Powell (R-33rd District), aims at regulating the cameras but doesn’t actually get rid of them.
HB 225 gets rid of them. It’s the one the State Senate should pass.
The bill(s), both of which were passed by the State House, are currently sitting in the Senate Public Safety Committee, which is chaired by Sen. John Albers (R-56th District). As far as I can tell, they’re not on the agenda now, but they could be soon.
According to Long, “camera companies have donated more than $863,500 to state lawmakers.” Erickson says that “Senate GOP has been given $150,000.00 to kill HB 225.” He’s referring to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article that states that “RedSpeed Georgia, which makes video cameras for school systems to crack down on speeding violations, contributed $150,000 each to both [Lt. Gov. Burt] Jones’s leadership committee and a PAC tied to the House GOP caucus between September 2023 and October 2024.”
Well, that explains a lot.
It also tells you exactly why, if you live in Georgia, you need to contact your state senator ASAP and tell them you’re a constituent and that you want them to pass HB 225. If you don’t know who your state senator is, here’s a handy list for you.
This bipartisan legislation may seem minor, but it would do away with one symptom of a major big-government disease. These cameras are not for the public good. All they do is take your hard-earned cash and put it in the pockets of politicians.
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