Tom McCarey copied me on a recent letter he sent newspapers:
Dear Editor:
Proof from England: speed cameras increase accidents, injuries, and deaths: the UK government’s safety claims do not stand up under honest statistical scrutiny (http://thenewspaper.com/news/44/4433.asp). Camera enforcement in Pennsylvania must be banned immediately.
Pro-camera studies fail to account for the statistical phenomenon known as regression to the mean. Speed cameras are often installed in locations that have experienced an unusually high number of collisions. Even without taking any corrective steps, accidents will likely fall back to the average or mean number of collisions. In fact, you are safer on the highway without photo RADAR and red light ticket cameras.
Yet the people who profit from photo traffic enforcement, the politicians, the auto insurers, the camera makers and their army of lobbyists, the police and the courts, claim big reductions in accidents even as the Philadelphia Police Department reports an increase in accidents at every camera-controlled intersection. Corporate profits and government spending are more important to these people than the lives of motorists.
Over 40 independent studies show that camera enforcement for profit increases accidents, injuries and deaths (www.bhspi.org). It is time we confront the promoters of these fraudulent devices and vote them out of office.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Tom McCarey
Mr. McCarey tells me he is “a member of the National Motorists Association” — I’ve relied on their studies for some of my articles: thanks, NMA! — who has “been fighting red light cameras and other enforcement-for-profit schemes for over 10 years.”
I like Mr. McCarey’s crusade not only because he’s fighting for liberty but because I learn something from each of his letters. Check out this one, and if you live in Pennsylvania, or use its pathetic highways (I do, and I can testify that no transportation pork escapes this state’s omnivorous appetite: you will wait hours in the traffic jams its constant repairs and construction create), Mr. McCarey warns that “on June 17, the PA Senate Transportation Committee is having a rubber-stamp ‘hearing’ on RADAR. It would be great if people would show up and argue for freedom.”
1:25 pm on June 16, 2014
