The New York man known as the Red Light Robin Hood pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Friday after being indicted on 17 felony counts of criminal mischief for cutting the wires to red light cameras where officials shortened yellow light-duration times from five to three seconds, giving drivers less time to stop, enabling Suffolk County to cite more drivers for running red lights.
Ruth says the two second reduction in yellow-light duration at some intersections is causing more deadly accidents, but has led to millions in profit for the county and Xerox, the company that contracts the cameras.
Thirty-two million dollars in profit, to be exact.
Ruth, offering no apologies, pleaded not guilty even though it won’t be hard to prove he committed the crime.
It won’t be hard to prove, because he called the news to cover not his first, but second flagrant act of civil disobedience explaining why he cut the wires to seventeen red light cameras in a local interview.
“I cut the cable wires, making it useless. I’ve made it dysfunctional, just like the whole red-light camera program.”
“I did it in order to save lives.”
Before that, he posted a how-to video of himself with a painter’s extension pole in his hand, tilting the cameras towards the sky, preventing the cameras from taking pictures for photo-enforced traffic citations as he simultaneously explained to viewers the steps involved in disabling the cameras.
“To do this successfully, all you need is a pair of balls and a painter’s extension rod. It doesn’t take more than a minute to do this, and the satisfaction is huge,” Ruth said with a swagger in his 65-second video clip. “I’m going to show you how easy it is to take the power back.”
Ruth then takes his painter’s extension rod, using it to point the camera towards the sky.
“I just saved people about $10,000 today with this camera. This is government taking advantage. And it’s going to stop!”
“I advise all Americans to take the power back and take the cameras down. It doesn’t matter where you are.”
Revenue and Crashes Increase
Ruth, although he argues red light cameras cause more wrecks because distracted drivers are busy looking for cameras, says the main problem lies in the details of Suffolk County’s contract with Xerox, which has built-in financial incentivizes to shorten the yellow lights.
The only problem is, at intersections where light-durations have been shortened, fatal accidents with injuries have doubled.
And while the revenue of the program increased, so did rear end collisions, up more than nine percent from 2010 to 2012, while injuries and side impact collisions were said to be down.
Xerox collects $13 for each ticket, an amount that jumps to $33 when a camera generates more than 90 tickets in a month.
If any camera to fails to generate at least 25 tickets between the hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., the contract requires the county to pay $2,132 for each camera that falls short of the 25-ticket quota.
In addition, Xerox collects $13 from Suffolk County for each ticket. That jumps to $33 per ticket when a camera generates more than 90 tickets in a month.
Ruth pointed out most of the cameras in upper-class neighborhoods with less traffic were taken down after they fell short of daily contract-quota, even after lights were shortened, and most cameras can be found in lower-class neighborhoods.
Videos on Ruth’s Facebook page show him timing yellow lights at intersections were people were killed, noting intersection where the light was previously five seconds now has a duration of three seconds, where several people were killed at the intersection after running red lights.
The program was implemented in 2010 by the state legislature when 50 cameras were installed. By 2012, 50 more cameras were installed increasing fines collected by $17 million.
But not only has revenue from the program increased, so did rear end collisions, up more than nine percent from 2010 to 2012, while injuries and side impact collisions were said to be down. The county has yet to release the crash information for the years following 2012.
An article by NPR claims the cameras reduce fatal accidents by 24 percent, but Suffolk County’s own study proves those numbers false and shows fatal traffic accidents have increased, at nearly half of the intersections equipped with red light cameras.
In that article, researcher Wen Hu, a researcher and transportation engineer for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit funded by insurance companies, said Ruth is “just crazy”
She blames people like Ruth who are ‘inciting the public’ for the 20 percent decline in the some 530 communities participating in the programs across the country over the past five years.
Ruth points out in addition to the problems with the contract, no engineer signed off on the shortened lights, and he wouldn’t want the cameras even if the lights were changed back to five seconds.
“They’ve already proved themselves reckless,” he told PINAC in a telephone interview.
Dave Raimondo, an attorney that filed a class action suit against Suffolk County after his experts investigating the case found engineers shortened the lights yet never signed off on it, backed up Ruth’s claims.
“People may not agree with Ruth’s action, but he is correct in knowing that the engineering behind the red light cameras is wrong.”
“They just manipulated it slightly to make sure it’s a little bit shorter to force red light running, and this is what my physicist and engineer have discovered,” he told CBS NewYork, “It’s been manipulated to increase red light running and as a result create revenue.”
If convicted, Stephen Ruth faces seven years in prison, but maintains he’s willing to go to jail for doing what’s right.
“If I get sentenced to time in jail,” said the Red Light Robin Hood, “so be it.”
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