A new twist in the camera debate

I am fascinated by the letter war that's erupted in response to a dad who says he was so opposed to Cedar Rapids' speed cameras that he paid his daughter's ticket when she got one on the condition that she stay away from downtown.

It's an odd eddy in the round-and-round we've had about traffic-enforcement cameras for what seems like a lifetime now.

In case you missed it, Mad Dad's Jan. 5 letter to the editor started out like this:

“I just paid my daughter's fine for speeding on Interstate 380,” he wrote. “I made a deal with her. I'll pay the fine if she goes to Coralville to shop. As she goes to Kirkwood Community College and Coralville is not that far down the road, she took me up on the deal.”

That didn't fly with some readers who felt compelled to attack the writer's parenting skills and “warped sense of responsibility” in letters of their own.

“I would have grounded the ‘kid,' taken the car keys away and demanded they take responsibility for their own actions by paying their own fine,” one reader wrote.

“Doesn't being a parent mean “parenting” our kids?” another asked.

“Gee, I wonder what's wrong with our society,” sneered a third.

Apparently, there's no shortage around here of people who are experts at raising other people's children.

But what really surprised me is that no one (so far - the letters still are coming) has taken Mad Dad to task for his faulty, if not uncommon, presumption that Cedar Rapids traffic enforcement cameras were approved and installed to rake in profits.

No one has even attempted to answer his question: “So, city fathers, was it worth the lost sales tax revenue to get your speeding under control?”

The answer, of course, is yes - speed cameras on 380 have proved their worth a thousand times over, not in dollars but in crashes, injuries and property damage avoided.

We all have seen the data by now - red-light and speed cameras have significantly reduced the number of crashes and fatalities in Cedar Rapids, just as intended.

But I guess that doesn't mean they don't still raise complicated ethical questions - depending on where you're standing.

I guess the closer you are to the ticket, the murkier the issue becomes. When someone else is caught in the dragnet, the cameras' benefits are crystal clear.

That's one good thing about cameras, if you ask me - they don't play favorites or get distracted by bluster or excuses.

People, on the other hand, are apparently much harder to keep on track.

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jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net