David Pennington

DALTON, Ga. — The Dalton City Council on Monday made it official: no more red light cameras will be used to enforce traffic laws.

Staff File Photo by Angela Lewis A traffic light camera, seen at left, watches over motorists in Dalton in this photograph taken in 2007.

Their unanimous vote means cameras, which were turned off March 3, can be removed from five downtown intersections.

“I’ve never seen proof that cameras make intersections safer,” Mayor David Pennington said before the Monday night council meeting. “Most of those tickets are issued for making rolling right-hand turns on red and that is not an accident issue.”

The use and effectiveness of remote cameras to enforce traffic laws in the Carpet Capital has been hotly debated for several years.

Traffic cameras installed at the intersection of Glenwood and Walnut avenues in 2005 were removed after about four months because tickets were not being processed in a timely manner.

In 2006 the city decided to try again and contracted Norcross, Ga.-based LaserCraft Inc. to install cameras at five “approaches” to intersections and were activated between July 2007 and February 2008.

Law enforcement officials say cameras are installed to make the city safer, not to generate revenue, and were never used to ticket speeding drivers.

“It was very effective from the first,” Police Chief Jason Parker said. “The main thing to remember is cameras were one tool to increase public safety.”

From the time the first cameras went online in 2007 there had been a noticeable drop in accidents throughout the city — not just at the intersections that were under constant surveillance by the traffic cameras, he said.

“People falsely believed that cameras were everywhere,” Chief Parker said. “Crashes in 2008 were at a 10-year low.”

Covering each approach costs $4,695 each month.

Revenue from tickets covered the camera’s cost in 2008, when expenses (camera rental and court costs) of $283,834 resulted in more than $344,000 being collected in fines.

Citations and the related fines have dropped since the first of the year.

The number of citations issued due to camera-recorded violations in January dropped to 203 this year compared to January 2008. The January 2009 cost of $23,834 was offset by collecting $24,500 in fines.

In February, the number of tickets dropped from 586 last year to 125 tickets and fines of $11,760 did not cover the camera’s costs of $23,475 for February 2009.

The city will notify LaserCraft of their decision today, after that it is up to the vendor to remove the cameras.

The chief said he hoped there will be a residual effect, that people will continue to heed traffic laws and not run lights.