(Long Island, NY) Suffolk County Legislature Presiding Officer DuWayne Gregory today issued the following statement on yesterday’s public forum on red light cameras:
“The Suffolk County red light camera program has long been a bipartisan effort to improve traffic safety and protect our residents. The program is the product of legislation that our late Presiding Officer Bill Lindsay introduced after his wife was seriously injured in an accident caused by a driver who ran a red light.
“Red light cameras save lives. A 2011 national study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that red light cameras reduced crashes in which people are killed by 24 percent. In Suffolk County, our most recent accident data shows that accidents involving injury have decreased by 10.6 percent since the program’s inception. Both the number of violations and the amount of revenue yielded by this program are trending down, which is exactly what we expected would happen over time.
“However, the concerns expressed by several citizens about alleged problems within the program are deserving of our attention. Legislator Kate Browning, Chair of the Public Safety Committee, has requested detailed statistics from the Department of Public Works, and has called on both the Department of Public Works and the Traffic and Parking Violations Agency to testify at the Nov. 12 meeting of the Public Safety Committee, which will be held at 10 a.m. at the William H. Rogers Legislature Building in Hauppauge. Members of the public are encouraged to attend.”
