I’m sure I’m not the only one in this town who is noticed new construction at several intersections in West Hartford. They all feature brand-new metal poles adorned with brand new traffic lights and expensive looking cameras. No doubt the hope is that these cameras will increase revenue for the town while decreasing “lawlessness”.

As reported by the Sentinel these cameras may do just the opposite. It seems the newest high school prank in towns with similar cameras is to print the valid license plate of someone who has recently offended you (like a teacher) and speed through the intersection to earn them your ticket. The owner of said license plate is then automatically mailed the ticket the following day.

This sort of automatic policing is inappropriate, and unconstitutional. Further it is a waste of the time, money and effort by everyone involved. I have read of only a few reasons why towns install cameras on traffic intercections:

• Monitor traffic and generate reports on traffic usage to help town planners pin point the best location for the next WalMart, etc
• Monitor for accidents  -but most of these cameras are not owned by the town and are instead held by GPS companies who relay this data to their customers, not the town in general.
• Monitor crime – automobile or otherwise
• The most common reason I’ve read of  is to generate funds from tickets automatically. This has the added bonus of freeing police officers to do more important things- like harass mall rat high school students, the true criminals in any society.

The whole practice of propping up municipal resources by forcibly extracting that money from the townsfolk that they purportedly serve to protect is both sad and ironic. Further I think the story by the Sentinel highlights a ever increasing trend with automated systems wherein mistakes do happen and we in society are judged based upon these technological mistakes.

Eventually someone will figure out that if they have car regonition software they will have fewer incidents of “camera punkin” but a larger database and more cameras. Eventually we’ll get used to them and wont notice when they start propping up on vans that regularly monitor the neighborhood. Think I’m kidding?

This photo was taken in Glasglow monitoring a market from accross the street. I bet they arn’t all this visible.