By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — Steve Abrahamson has seen drivers speed past stop signs on 18th Street without slowing down.
But he can’t always have his eyes on violators.
About three years ago, he figures a driver must have blown the stop sign at 9th Avenue at a high speed and rear-ended his Chevy Impala, which was parked on the street.
“They hit it so hard it spun around and ended up in my driveway,” said Abrahamson, a 64-year-old lifelong Rockford resident.
The crash did about $7,000 in damage to his car.
“And then they took off,” he said.
The hit-and-run crash is one example where Abrahamson sees the potential benefit of additional police surveillance such as red-light or speed cameras.
It’s a request Mayor Tom McNamara said he occasionally hears from residents dealing with issues of speeding or other traffic violations. But, as he tells residents, the city has no authority to install such devices.
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State law limits red-light and speed cameras to eight counties: Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair and Will. McNamara wants that to change. Although he’s not sold on putting up such cameras in Rockford, he feels the city deserves to have the authority to make that decision itself.
“We in Rockford should have much greater authority of what we can and cannot do and have that locally, by the mayor, by the City Council and by residents – not by legislators down in Springfield,” McNamara said.
McNamara said he’s raised the issue with state Sen. Steve Stadelman, state Rep. Dave Vella and state Rep. Maurice West to see if they might take up changing state law to allow for Rockford to make the decision locally.
“No. 1, we have a speeding issues. No. 2, we have an issue with people failing to follow all the traffic rules,” McNamara said. “We are enforcing it. Our officers are doing a great job. But I think it’s worthy of investigating (installing red-light and speed cameras). Would we do it, I don’t know.”
The mere mention of red-light cameras can raise the hackles of motorists who see them as a government cash grab, as opposed to a public safety measure.
“It’s probably one of the most unpopular things I’ve ever seen,” Vella said. “I can tell you they’re extremely unpopular where they’re at and I’m not sure they’re very effective.”
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He said he understand’s the city’s desire to have local control, but isn’t in favor of the devices themselves.
“Traffic tickets can be a very regressive tax and we pay enough as it is,” Vella said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen any studies that show these red-light cameras do anything to make the streets safer, all it does is add revenue to the city.”
Chicago drivers were issued 2,817,554 million citations from speed cameras in 2021, which is more than the city’s estimated population of roughly 2.7 million, according to a report by the Illinois Policy Institute. Some of those tickets were issued for going 6 to 10 miles per hour over the limit. The total fines were more than $89 million, including $59 million from tickets for going 6 to 10 mph too fast, according to the report.
“The city of Chicago, for example, if you go six miles over the speed limit you get a ticket,” Stadelman said. “That seems a little obsessive and overreaching to me.”
Whether the devices make streets safer has also been disputed. A 2018 study by Case Western Reserve University, for example, concluded that red-light cameras don’t reduce the number of crashes or injuries at intersections where they’re installed. That study focused on the cameras use in Houston.
“I’m not convinced of the safety of red-light cameras,” Stadelman said. “I think as we’ve seen they’ve been more revenue generators for a municipality versus necessarily making streets safer.”
For Abrahamson, however, it is a matter of public safety. He’s in search of any way that can prevent a crash in his neighborhood and said so far he hasn’t had much luck getting the city’s attention to the issue.
“I bet if you spent an hour out here, you’d probably see 10 people just completely blow it without even slowing down,” Abrahamson said. “They don’t even slow down.”
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on Twitter at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas.