Things You Should Know About Those Red Light Cameras

There used to be a stretch of roadway in a small town outside of St. Louis that I had to drive on a regular basis. There was a small sign at the entrance to the town that said it was the city limits. Further on up the road was another sign that posted the speed limit at 20 miles per hour. Now the only problem was that right before the city limits the speed limit was 50 miles per hour. You had to almost slam on your brakes to drop that 30 miles per hour in the few seconds that it took you to travel to the 20 mile an hour sign. And most days there was a black and white stationed right past the sign. How convenient. But hey it was a small town that was right off of the interstate and what better way to raise revenue than by creating a speed trap?

Now it seems that St. Louis and St Louis County have a new hi-tech way to accomplish the same goal. At one of the busiest intersections in the county, not far from my house, is a traffic light. On top of the traffic light is a red light camera. The red light camera is designed to go off if anyone runs the red light, or makes an improper right turn on red. It snaps a picture of your car and the license plate and a few days later, presto! You get a ticket in the mail. The fine ranges from $70-$100 depending on where you are and whether you have to pay court costs or not. The only problem with this particular intersection is that there is a bus stop right beyond the light. If you're not careful and there are a couple of cars in front of you and the bus stops unexpectedly, you might find yourself out in the middle of the intersection staring right at the camera as the light changes and you have nowhere to go. It's almost happened to me a couple of times.