PORT ST. LUCIE – The City Council majority here voted Nov. 24 to approve an ordinance authorizing red-light cameras in 10 of the city’s intersections on second reading in an effort to reduce right-angle crashes in the city despite a last minute plea by one resident to table the ordinance until more research could be done on their effectiveness.
Council members held the first reading on the ordinance Nov. 10, during which Police Chief Leo Niemczyk provided crash data on the 10 intersections.
The one at Cashmere and St. Lucie West boulevards is the most dangerous for those right-angle crashes, with 75 out of the 264 crashes in 2022 stemming from that type of incident.
Southwest Bayshore Boulevard and Southwest Port St. Lucie Boulevard recorded the highest overall crashes – 384 wrecks – 48 of which were right-angles, or rather ones in which an oncoming vehicle T-bones the driver’s side of a vehicle entering the traffic lane.
The highest number of red-light violations occurred that year at Southwest Tradition and Southwest Village parkways, which recorded officers issuing 163 red-light citations and a total of 235 accidents. Twenty-nine of those were right-angle crashes.
Vice-Mayor Jolien Caraballo, who chaired the latest meeting in the absence of Mayor Shannon Martin, asked for and got the consensus of the Council to allow a member of the public to speak on the matter since the one and only public hearing on the ordinance had been held two weeks prior.
Live Oak Cove resident George Umansky subsequently told the Board that he was a former military training instructor who well understood modifying behavior and had spent 26 years working in the closed circuit television industry.
He believes the presence of actual police officers at the aforementioned intersections would be a better deterrant for running red lights than 24-hour video surveillance.
“My concern is whether red-light cameras are the right first step for changing driver behavior in this city,” he said. “The studies often claim large reductions in violations, but true behavior change would mean the violations would steadily decline over time. That just doesn’t happen. As a former military training instructor, our purpose was to change behavior for the entire group of recruits. When one slipped up, 60 others learned from that correction, [and] that’s how you change conduct across a population. Red-light cameras don’t create that effect. The only person who learns anything is the one that receives the citation in the mail.”
In fact, Umansky believes private companies wouldn’t even be willing to provide all the infrastructure without cost to the city if they thought the citations would reduce red-light violations in the future.
“In fact, most automated citations don’t come from red-light running but from rolling right turns, where drivers slow, look and safely proceed,” he continued. “Although technically a violation, this normalized behavior rarely causes the types of crashes the city aims to prevent, but it’s an easy target for increased revenue collection. A dedicated enforcement team would be far more effective. For these reasons, I urge you to vote no – or at a minimum – to table this and implement a one-year enhanced enforcement plan and then reevaluate.”
Vice-Mayor Jolien Caraballo then asked if any of her colleagues had any comments. When she got no response, she offered her own.
“I understand your concerns, but when you’re looking at effective driver behavior, I also consider places like Orlando,” she said. “They have several red-light cameras. Seeing those signs upon approach, as well GPS navigation telling you ahead of time that there’s a red-light camera, definitely brings some awareness. It definitely makes me understand that there’s an intersection coming and I need to be very cogniscient of that actually being there.”
“I think as far as your examples of seeing a car versus an actual camera and signage, I think both are effective.”
During the first reading, the vice-mayor had expressed a preference for the cameras in hopes of keeping more police officers available for more serious issues rather than writing traffic citations for running red lights. She concluded with her affirmation of that goal, as well as emphasizing that Chief Niemczyk would be trying out the infraction detection devices at a few of the intersections to begin with and report back to the Council before fully rolling out the program.
“This isn’t just the fact we want to make sure people are safe at intersections,” she concluded. “It’s a necessity to keep our residents safe: We need every officer available to take the calls for safety. We’re not doing a lot of intersections; I believe chief is going to pilot them at first. We’ll see how it goes from there, and then we can have further conversation.”
For his part, Councilman Anthony Bonna reminded his colleagues that he’d cast the lone dissenting vote after the first reading and had seen nothing in the interim to make him change his mind.
“I was a no-vote last meeting, and I still am going to be voting no,” he said. “I worry about increased rear-end accidents. I see a lot of other cities that have implemented this and suddenly discontinuing their cameras. I just have too many questions about it to vote yes.”
The City Council then voted 3-1 to approve the ordinance, with Councilman Bonna dissenting and Mayor Martin absent.
At the onset of his Nov. 10 presentation, Chief Niemczyk had used his concern about the rising traffic accident fatality rate and the frequency of right-angle crashes to justify his push for the cameras.
Subsequent information sent by his officer to the Hometown News, however, revealed that no traffic fatalities have occurred at the 10 intersections slated for the cameras.