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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Suit Claims City Witholding Red Light Camera Study 12-26-2008 Houston Chronicle Two longtime critics of the city's red-light camera program filed an open-records lawsuit against the city today, claiming officials refused to release a study on whether the devices reduce accidents. Houston lawyers Paul Kubosh and Randall Kallinen, who have fought the program in courts before, allege that the report by Rice University professor Bob Stein has languished unseen by the public since August 2008. "It is clearly an open record," they said a written news release. "The public needs to see the report to make informed decisions whether to continue the privately run red-light camera system costing Houston citizens tens of millions of dollars." Kubosh and Kallinen, as well as Houston media lawyer Joe Larsen, were expected to announce the lawsuit this afternoon at a news conference outside Rice University. Mayor Bill White's office, which initially planned to release the report weeks ago, said last week that it would be made available Monday. His staff attacked the lawsuit as a publicity stunt. "He's obviously doing some self promoting," mayoral spokesman Frank Michel said of Kubosh, who defends motorists in Municipal Courts. "We can only assume this is a P.R. exercise by someone who makes a living defending in traffic court." Michel said the report originally was due in late summer, but city officials found flaws in its data based on record-keeping anomalies. Some wrecks on freeways, for example, were coded as though they happened at the monitored intersections below the freeways. The mayor's office later asked Stein to make some changes for clarity so the public and reporters could more easily understand the conclusions. "We haven't changed the substance of the report at all," he said. "The data is what the data is." Stein, who also has studied the mayor's mandatory freeway towing program known as Safe Clear, could not immediately be reached for comment. Texas Transportation Institute researcher Tim Lomax also helped with the report, city officials say. The lawsuit comes after one of Lomax's colleagues at the Texas A&M University institute issued a report noting that monitored intersections statewide had an overall 30 percent decrease in collisions. That report only examined data from 56 intersections across the state, including many in Houston, from July 1, 2007, to June 31. The data and analysis are limited because some cities' cameras went online during the study period and their post-installation data were not complete. But that report states that the cameras could be changing driver behavior. "While these results cannot conclusively determine that red light cameras are responsible for the overall reduction in crashes ... the presence of the treatment provided some effect on the frequency of crashes at the selected intersections for the limited time period of this analysis," the report states.
Poster Comment: When will these people get it thru their thick skulls that it is all about the money? They dont give a damn about safety. Unless, of course, an unsafe condition results in a lawsuit against the city. Which brings us back to the money again...
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