Claim: By June 2010, Florida will be replacing all its interstate call boxes with cameras that automatically track and ticket speeders.
Example:
[Collected via e-mail, July 2009]
Starting June 1 2010
All Interstate in Florida, will have the Call boxes (on side of the interstate) replaced with Cameras that will take a picture of your tag at one box, and then another picture as you pass the next. It will then calculate your time from one box to the next and issue you a speeding ticket determined by the time it took you to get from one box to the next. It knows how fast you are going, to the exact speed.
Neither one of these fractions will be points on your license, just a fine that you will not be able to go to court and fight, just has to be paid, no if's, ands or buts about it. You have to pay them, or lose your license for a period determined by a Judge.
Origins: Once upon a time, traffic enforcement officials could track and cite speeding motorists only by following them in patrol vehicles for prescribed distances and estimating the offenders' speeds in comparison to their own. The development of radar guns allowed police to remain stationary alongside roadways and still catch speeders (as well as measuring their rate of travel more accurately). Then the advent of speed cameras (which use radar to track passing cars and automatically snap pictures of vehicles traveling in excess of speed limits) almost entirely removed humans from the process of catching speeders.
Now, many privacy advocates have been fearing that the next logical step will be the issuance of tickets to motorists who weren't actually caught in the act of speeding by either a human being or a speed-measuring device — rather, drivers' progress between checkpoints will be tracked by transponders or
cameras, with elapsed times of passage between checkpoints recorded and used to estimate whether vehicles had to have been traveling in excess of speed limits at any portion of their journeys. (Such a scheme would prevent habitually speeding drivers from avoiding detection by learning the locations of speed traps and radar cameras and slowing down in their proximity.)
The "camera tracking" scenario raises concerns that citizens might have to defend themselves against citations that do not detail where, when, and by how much they were speeding, and warnings about that possibility circulated widely in 2007 (in the form of a rumor that New York would be using E-ZPass transponders or RFID chips embedded within vehicle registration stickers to catch speeders). A similar rumor was floated in mid-2009, one which claimed Florida would be replacing the call boxes along its interstate highways with cameras which would snap pictures of passing cars and issue tickets to those determined to have passed between two call boxes too quickly for the given speed limit.
However, the implementation of such a system in Florida is not imminent. As of June 2009 only two states in the U.S., Maryland and Arizona, use any form of photo enforcement cameras on freeways; thirteen other states have laws specifically banning the use of freeway cameras, and camera enforcement programs in California and Florida "were dismantled after they were found to be operating outside of state law."
Although it's not completely beyond the pale of possibility that Florida might roll out a freeway speed camera system someday, legal and technical hurdles currently preclude the proposition cited in the above-quoted example — that Florida will be replacing all its interstate call boxes with tracking cameras by June of 2010. In response to our inquiry to the Florida Department of Transportation (DOT), a representative with the Intelligent Transportation Systems Section of the DOT's Traffic Engineering and Operations Office told us that:
The rumor is not true; the Department will not be replacing the call boxes with cameras to catch speeders.
This rumor is not true for several reasons:
1) It is illegal. The Department does not have legislative authority to attach speed enforcement cameras on our call box poles
2) It is technically impossible. The call boxes do not have a dedicated power source which will be needed to operate the cameras. It would be cost prohibitive to run power to all the call boxes, making use of the poles impractical. The call boxes run off of a spring that powers a small generator which generates enough power to send a signal for assistance. The spring is tightened by pulling down a handle on the front of the box — when the handle is released, the spring is released, running the generator. Once the signal is sent, the box reverts back to its powerless state.
Last updated: 2 August 2009
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/floridacameras.asp
