Shorter yellow times are now the ticket

[Klackamas]

Shorter yellow times are now the ticket
Gail Baikie



Gail Baikie, of Skokie, is among drivers who have seen Chicago traffic tickets tossed because of short yellow light times. "I really think they need to fix this because so many people just pay these things without even thinking about it." (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
David KidwellContact ReporterChicago Tribune

Evidence suggests city cast wider net on red light camera tickets.

A Tribune examination of overturned red light tickets revealed evidence that the city of Chicago has quietly cast a wider net to snare drivers since switching camera vendors earlier this year amid a bribery scandal.

A before-and-after analysis of photographic evidence and interviews with experts suggests the transition to a new vendor last spring was accompanied by a subtle but significant lowering of the threshold for yellow light times.

City hearing officers have noticed the trend and are increasingly tossing tickets because the yellow light time stamped on the citation is less than the 3-second minimum required by the city, the Tribune analysis showed.

Xerox State & Local Solutions took over the program in March. Since April, hearing officers have cited short yellow lights as the reason for throwing out more than 200 of roughly 1,500 rejected red light tickets, according to their written notations. In the four years before that, under the old vendor, judges blamed short yellows only 37 times out of more than 12,000 successful appeals, according to their written notes.

It's a rate 50 times higher than when the old vendor, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., ran the program.

"Right now we are having a big problem with these red lights, and the city needs to get this straightened out," administrative law judge Robert Sussman said during one hearing in August where he tossed two successive red light camera tickets because of short yellow times.

"I am getting 60 to 70 percent of my Xerox photos that come up, they are under 3 (seconds)," Sussman said. "When the city starts getting this stuff right, I will start finding liability again like I was doing before. But right now, I just can't do it until the city becomes more reliable. ... Something is going on here. I mean this has to be taken care of."

City officials said the yellow light times being rejected by judges as too short are in fact valid because they fall within an allowable variance that is caused by fluctuations in electrical power.

"It's showing 2.9, it records 2.9 on the data bar as you see on the violation," Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld said in a recent interview. "But that actual performance is probably 2.998 — or something like that — where the variation is in the hundredths or thousandths of a second, which is imperceptible."

Scheinfeld said Xerox made a business decision "to truncate" the measurement as it appears on the ticket to a tenth of a second, "and that is all well within the national standard for any type of allowable variance."

Asked why Xerox had so many tickets with yellow times below 3 seconds when Redflex tickets — which showed measurements to the hundredths of a second — almost never showed a time below 3 seconds, Scheinfeld declined to answer, citing an ongoing investigation by the city's inspector general.

Slight deviations in the duration of the so-called amber interval can have a powerful effect on how many drivers are caught by red light cameras.

In the course of uncovering troubling and unexplained spikes involving tens of thousands of tickets during Redflex's tenure, the Tribune reported in July that it found hundreds of cases where yellow light times fluctuated between 4 and 3 seconds. But the Redflex tickets rarely went below 3 seconds, the newspaper found.

Officials at Xerox and Redflex declined to be interviewed for this report, referring all questions to the city.

Asked why hearing officers hired by Emanuel's administration to enforce the traffic laws are routinely throwing out the tickets if the time is allowable, Scheinfeld said the hearing officers are independent.

Gail Baikie was among the drivers who won because of short yellow times. The security guard was ticketed twice within 20 minutes on May 18 on her way home from work.

"I am really disappointed with the city, and upset that they would try to take advantage of people like that," said Baikie, 38, of Skokie.

Both tickets were overturned by an administrative law judge because the yellow lights were too short, records show.

"I didn't even know about the 3-second rule," said Baikie, who appealed both tickets by mail arguing that she made two legal right turns. "I really think they need to fix this because so many people just pay these things without even thinking about it. That's just horrible."

Administrative law judges have thrown out 1,511 tickets from April 1 through Aug. 20, according to city records. In 222 cases, they noted in their written explanation that a yellow interval under 3 seconds was to blame. All but three of those tickets were from Xerox.

The Tribune found an additional 299 cases in which tossed tickets had yellow lights under 3 seconds but hearing officers did not specify their reasons. They often don't provide written explanations for rejecting a ticket when drivers appeal in person at a tape-recorded hearing.

Taken together, that means 521 tickets — more than a third of all those rejected since April — had short yellow times.

More than two dozen judges cited short yellow lights for rejecting citations, the Tribune found.

Records show that Sussman cited short yellow times 18 times on Xerox tickets from April through August. Sussman also tossed an additional 32 tickets with short yellow times at hearings in which he cited no specific reason on public records.

In Baikie's cases, the hearing officer who tossed both tickets was William Kelley, who records show has thrown out 29 tickets since April because of short yellow lights.

"2.9 second Yellow. No Prima Facie case. Citizen prevails," Kelley wrote in the notes field on his computer for both the Baikie tickets in his Aug. 7 ruling.

In throwing out another driver's ticket July 29, Kelley wrote, "inconsistent evidence. City photograph shows 2.9-second yellow light. 3 seconds required by law. No prima facie case. Citizen prevails."

Similar language was used by other judges in tossing tickets with 2.9-second yellows.

"Illinois and federal standards for amber signal length is 3.0 secs. And city's website states its length for amber signal is 3.0 secs," wrote hearing officer Paul Gridelli in a July 31 ruling. "Since evidence shows city noncompliance w/ 3.0 sec. standard for amber signal, grtr wt. (greater weight) to R (respondent)."

Hearing officer Daniel Ruiz threw out a red light ticket June 12 with the following reasoning: "Amber light not on for the required 3.0 seconds. Only 2.9 seconds."

Hearing officers contacted by the Tribune either declined to comment or did not return calls.

City officials have not yet complied with a Sept. 5 Tribune request for a database of recent red light camera tickets. Those records would help identify how many drivers were ticketed under short yellow lights.

Because fewer than 10 percent of all ticketed drivers ever bother to appeal red light tickets, it is possible that thousands of drivers have been dinged for fines they wouldn't have received before Xerox took over in April.

The city of Chicago sets all its traffic lights based on the shortest allowable time under federal safety guidelines, which suggest yellow intervals ranging from 3 to 6 seconds depending on the speed of traffic.

For traffic moving at 30 mph or less, the guidelines say the shortest allowable yellow light in order to give drivers enough time to stop is 3 seconds. Scheinfeld said all traffic lights with approach speeds of 30 mph are set for 3 seconds. At 35 mph, she said, the yellow light times move to 4 seconds.

"That's what the signal is set for, the actual performance of the signal itself is subject to what I would call imperceptible variations from 3.0 based on the power supply," Scheinfeld said. "Very minor inconsistencies in the power supply can actually cause the lights to be off by hundredths or thousandths of a second. Imperceptible differences from the setting."

Before any violation is finalized, a technician and a reviewer are required to sign off on the evidence, including the yellow light interval. City officials have refused to answer questions about whether the city or Xerox made any changes to the yellow light criteria.

Chicago's red light camera program has come under intense scrutiny following Tribune reports about an alleged corruption scheme in which the former top city official who oversaw the contract is accused of taking up to $2 million in bribes since the program began in 2003.

Those reports prompted Mayor Rahm Emanuel to fire Redflex and hand the contract over to Xerox.

In July, after a 10-month review that included an analysis of more than 4 million tickets, the Tribune reported about a series of suspicious spikes in red light camera tickets at intersections throughout the city that led to tens of thousands of questionable tickets. The Tribune's probe found evidence the spikes were caused by equipment malfunctions, human tinkering or both.

Inspector General Joseph Ferguson, who is working with federal agents investigating the corruption allegations, is also probing the potential causes of the ticket spikes. That investigation is looking at the possibilities that equipment malfunctions, changing enforcement criteria and short yellow times contributed to the wild swings in ticketing.

Tribune reporter Alex Richards contributed.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-red-light-camera-yellow-timing-20141009-story.html