[commonsense]

I happen to follow the auto industry, but if you "follow the money" in any number of seemingly unrelated industries, you'll discover what's behind many of our legislative trends.

I won't go into how the National Institute for Highway Safety, and others are actually lobbying fronts for the insurance industry, because the examples are too numerous and the relationships between the judiciary revenue machine, stinking nazi cops, and the "safety" industry and the driver/consumer are too intricate, and most of you are already too brainwashed by our socialistic educational system to see its injustices and frauds, the idea that "well, if it saves just one life, ever. in its legislative existence, then the law is necessary".... is so firmly implanted in your squirrel-sized brains, but example abound that I won't go into (like the dispute over mandatory airbags that have mixed consequences, safety, ecological, and economic)

so I'll pick a battle I have a chance of success at enlightening you about here:

Traffic Redlight-Running Cameras

Statistically, almost no one gets injured by someone running a redlight in a given year...

However, beginning quite a few years ago, bell&howell began marketing a camera system that took and developed pictures, automatically ticketed drivers and collected the money... and deposits it in the town coffers.

"Well, you shouldn't be running red lights, right?"
Right.
Except for one thing:
The camera set-ups, printing and documenting systems cost whatever one-horse (or more accurately, "one traffic-light town") between $750,000 and a million dollars upfront... and are marketed as "trouble-free" no "overhead" profit centers for the greedy municipalities guaranteed to pay off the investment in a given amount of time... If they don't, the company offers to "adjust" the duration of the yellow signal until a significant amount of offenders are created.

Soon enough, the local residents begin to adjust their driving habits after enough of them get stung and word gets around to slam on the brakes, even when reasonably just passing under a yellow (born out by reaction time studies) that should allow a driver to continue (we're not talking about flooring it in response to a yellow a 1/4 mile ahead)

The Result?
A significant number of rear-end collisions and injuries where none existed prior to installation of the lights or cameras.

Its a win-win for greedy municipalities because they can issue even more tickets if a crash occurs.

This was contested in court because a lawyer disputed whether he was in fact driving the car when it was photographed in the intersection after the red signal...

The judge responded with "maybe you weren't driving, but the law reads: the OWNER is ticketed" ... and smugly added, "We've built a better mousetrap"

This is among the simplest of examples of government abuse, but I'm sure you good little parrots out here will see it as corporate greed instead.