STOPLIGHT CAMERAS NEED FULL ASSESSMENT

It's hard to say how much each of us is being watched when we are outside our homes. Cameras monitor our withdrawals from ATMs. Most business establishments have some sort of security-camera system. Most of the Southeast Missouri State University campus is blanketed with monitoring cameras that were installed a few years ago to give the campus police an overview of the comings and goings over a sizable area.

There is both a comfort factor and a Big Brother factor in the use of all these cameras. It is reassuring, for example, to some people who see a security camera in place and assume someone is keeping track of what the camera sees. On the other hand, there is a sense of violated privacy when cameras watch everything you do -- literally, everything.

It is against this backdrop that the Cape Girardeau City Council is considering the idea of mounting cameras at some major street intersections with the intention of reducing the number of motorists who run red lights and of singling out violators who would be automatically ticketed.

So. Is this a safety proposal, or is it government sticking its nose where it doesn't belong?

There are certainly some good safety aspects of using cameras at stoplights. For example, the video cameras are capable of determining when motorists approaching a stoplight that is about to turn red are likely to speed through an intersection rather than coming to a stop. The cameras then interrupt the sequencing of the lights to keep traffic on cross streets stopped instead of pulling into the path of the red-light violator. This feature alone makes the proposed system attractive from a safety point of view.

But two councilmen are uneasy with other aspects of the stoplight cameras. For example, the owners of vehicles that run red lights would be the ones to receive the tickets, and those owners might very well not be the person driving the vehicle. There are procedures for dealing with such cases that would allow the vehicle's owner to sign an affidavit naming the driver. But, as Ward I Councilman Frank Stoffregen observed in a guest column Wednesday on this page, there are a considerable number of pitfalls to these procedures.

To its credit, the City Council is proceeding slowly on this idea. It wants -- and certainly needs -- all the information it can gather before a final decision is made.

But the information-gathering process needs to continue. If video cameras at stoplights have the ability to prevent accidents that can cause serious injuries or fatalities, they need to get serious consideration.