Many people wonder, “What’s the difference between red light cameras, traffic cameras, and others, such as speed cameras?” These are all cameras that monitor our driving, so it can be difficult to keep track of all of them. Automated traffic enforcement cameras (ATECs) issue penalties and violations, while there are others that fall into different categories.
On this occasion, we are going to focus on the difference between the most known types of cameras, which is important to keep track of our responsibilities as drivers. Here are the main differences between traffic cameras, red-light cameras, and speed cameras:
What Are Red Light Cameras?
A lot of people don’t like red light cameras. Red light cameras are ticket-issuing machines that are set up at busy intersections. They can tell when a driver enters the intersection at a red light. If this is found, the camera will take a lot of pictures of the car as it breaks the law. A few weeks later, the driver will get an unpleasant surprise in the mail.
You can tell a red light camera from other camera systems by where it is— which is always near a busy intersection— and how it looks. There will also be a lot of red light cameras at each intersection so that they can see from a lot of different angles.
No moving violations or criminal charges are made by the red light cameras. From a legal point of view, they are administrative violations, like getting a parking ticket. That means you don’t have a right to go to court and defend yourself against someone who’s accused you. If you get a red light ticket in the mail and don’t pay it, you won’t be arrested, but your credit will be affected.
Are Red Light Cameras the Same as Speed Cameras?
Speed cameras are similar to red-light cameras in how they work. Speed cameras do the same thing, but they do so for speeding violations instead of for red-light violations.
Speed cameras are usually placed in a different way than red light cameras, which are usually placed in the same place. Red light cameras are usually found in cities with a lot of people. On less crowded back roads and residential areas, you can find speed signs and not cameras where people have complained about speeding.
Speed cameras come in two types: fixed and moving. People can usually tell fixed-speed cameras from other types of cameras because they are almost always placed high up on poles next to the road. Mobile speed cameras are more difficult to see because they are not fixed to the ground. They can be on a tripod or inside of a van. It’s not safe to use crowdsourcing apps or databases that come with radar detectors to help you find mobile speed cameras because they move around a lot.
What About Traffic Cameras?
A traffic camera is a video camera that looks at traffic on a road. Usually, traffic cameras are placed on major roads like highways, freeways, expressways, and arterial roads. They are usually connected to each other by optical fibers that are buried next to or under the road. In urban areas, they can be powered by mains electricity, or by solar panels, or other sources that don’t have power outages.
Traffic cameras are not the same as road safety cameras. These cameras are set up in specific places to make sure people follow the rules of the road by taking still photos at a much higher resolution when they get a trigger. Traffic cameras are only there to watch. They take lower-resolution videos all the time, often in full motion, but they can be remotely controlled to focus on an accident in the distance or at an angle that is normally outside their field of view, like a frontage road. A lot of times, the video from these cameras isn’t kept or used to figure out what happened in an accident. These cameras aren’t part of any kind of law enforcement system.
Please contact us at Ticket Snipers if you have any questions about traffic and red cameras and how to defend your vehicle against speeding citations. We are available 24/7 if you’d like to chat with one of our trained consultants about speeding ticket defense.
