A Senate committee today shot down a bill to ban red light cameras despite arguments the cameras don’t improve public safety and are hated by citizens.

Senate Bill 50, sponsored by Sen. Scott Renfroe, R-Greeley, would have banned the use of red light cameras as well as photo radar. The bill, however, would have allowed the use of photo identification on toll roads.

Renfroe pointed to a December audit done by Denver City Auditor Dennis Gallagher that questioned whether the cameras were making people safer or were just a cash cow.

“These programs were sold as public-safety enhancements but are widely viewed as a cash grab,” Gallagher said at the time. “It undermines public trust to maintain photo enforcement programs that are profitable but whose safety impact has not been conclusively shown.”

And Renfroe pointed to a study in Kansas City that showed T-bone accidents in intersections with red light cameras stayed steady after the cameras were installed while rear-end accidents in those intersections actually increased.

Renfroe said he had never personally gotten a red light camera ticket, but he had been the victim of vehicles running red lights, having his vehicle struck twice in such accidents.

Still, he said, he belived the evidence showed that traffic safety improvements like longer yellow light times and left-hand turn lanes did more to improve safety than red light cameras.

John Gaudio, an electrical engineer who has a patent on a speed-measuring system, testified in support of banning the cameras. Gaudio said he got a ticket in Denver for going 50 mph in a 40 mph zone, but his speedometer showed him going only 40 mph.

He said the red light cameras’ speed-measurement equipment is not always accurate, and when he confronted officials in charge of the equipment about it, they couldn’t even accurately explain how it worked.

“This is an atrocity,” Gaudio said. “This undermines the opinion of the people with regard to

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