Dayton red-light camera sites
Smithville Road at Patterson Road
Third Street at Edwin C. Moses Boulevard
Troy Street at Stanley Avenue
Stanley Avenue at Valley Street
Third Street at James H. McGee Boulevard
Gettysburg Avenue at Cornell Drive
Main Street at Hillcrest Avenue
U.S. 35 at Abbey Avenue
Salem Avenue at North Avenue
Salem Avenue at Hillcrest Avenue
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Drivers in Dayton have failed to pay more than 46,000 red-light camera tickets worth $3.89 million in the past eight years — more than 45 percent of all such tickets issued — and the city may start towing offenders to collect some of that money.
An ordinance introduced this week at Dayton City Commission would allow the city to tow cars that have two or more unpaid red-light violations, requiring the owner to pay the fines to get their car back.
A car could be towed if an officer on regular patrol simply matched a license plate to the tow list, but city officials said they will not specifically seek out cars on the list.
City Commission likely will vote on the issue Wednesday.
“If you have a fine assessed and there’s no teeth in enforcing that fine, it’s a mere suggestion that people change their driving behavior,” Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl said.
“I recommended this change to the ordinance three years ago. ... We needed some way to address this.”
Dayton has red-light traffic cameras at 10 city intersections.
When a driver runs a red light, the camera takes a picture of the violation, and the vehicle owner is mailed a civil citation, but no points are assessed against the driver’s license, and the insurance company is not contacted.
The fine is $85 per citation, with Dayton getting $55 of the fee, and Redflex, the camera company, getting $30. By that breakdown, those 46,124 unpaid citations are worth $2.53 million to Dayton and $1.38 million to Redflex.
City spokesman Tom Biedenharn said unpaid citations have been turned over to collection agencies in the past, without great success, although a new collection effort that began in April has triggered some progress. But with the city looking at millions in state budget cuts in the next two years, they chose a more aggressive approach.
“Towing or booting a person’s vehicle has a much more immediate and dramatic impact that we believe will result in more outstanding fines being paid,” Biedenharn said.
About 500 cities nationwide have some red-light cameras, with Los Angeles courts and legislators currently battling over the legality of their program. The Ohio Supreme Court upheld the legality of red-light cameras in 2008.
Locally, Dayton, Trotwood and West Carrollton have cameras. Doug Woodard, deputy police chief in West Carrollton, said 72 percent of citations in his city have been paid, with the city using collection agencies, but not towing cars.
Mike Begley said he was surprised to receive a collection notice last month for a red-light camera ticket he received on Salem Avenue in 2005. Begley said at the time of the citation, he complained both about the placement of the camera near back-to-back traffic lights and what he called a lack of due process in appeals procedures.
“The whole thing was just greed and nothing to do with traffic safety,” said Begley, who said he did not pay the fine.
Biehl disagreed about the safety claim, pointing to a 2011 Insurance Institute of Highway Safety study that said fatal red-light-running crashes had dropped by 21 percentage points more in cities with cameras than those without.
Biehl said earlier this year, that Dayton has seen a 35 percent reduction in red-light-running accidents at camera intersections since 2003.
“We don’t have the personnel to give all the attention we would like to give to traffic enforcement, and augmenting our efforts with technology is one of the ways we’ve been able to maintain effectiveness,” Biehl said.
University of Dayton law professor Tom Hagel said he has some misgivings about the appeals process involved with red-light cameras, given the possibility of mechanical error and the inability to question the company who viewed the photos. But Hagel said accused violators who don’t use that appeal process will have little legal defense if their car is towed.
The two-unpaid-ticket threshold is the same as the city already has for parking tickets, and Biedenharn said the city could tow people with one parking ticket and one red-light camera ticket.
Sean Stokes, who drove through the Smithville/Patterson roads camera intersection Thursday morning, said he wasn’t in love with the idea of towing people’s cars, but understood the city’s position.
“If they have the photo, the evidence, that you’ve run that light three times, then I guess I don’t see a problem with it,” he said. “People who can’t be bothered with the people around them are the ones running the red lights.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2278.
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