Legislature Votes to Outlaw Speed Cameras

Speed cameras will soon be a thing of the past in Tennessee.    
 
The General assembly voted 29 to 1 to outlaw the cameras used to issue traffic tickets. The original purpose of the bill was to outlaw red light cameras as well. Todd Gardenhire, State Senator District 10 said, "Really in order to get something done we couldn’t mess with the red light camera, but we could alter the speed cameras which was the real problem and complaints that we had." Another major complaint from the cameras came from municipalities abusing the purpose of proposed safety. Gardenhire said, "A lot of them were doing it for two reasons. One, convenience for people that lived on those streets, and number two, they were doing it as a revenue producer."

Chattanooga issued around 35-thousand tickets from speed cameras last year. The city said the cameras reduced fatalities on dangerous roads. Gardenhire said, "Right now it bans all unmanned speed cameras except for school zones and on s-curves." State Representative Gerald McCormick says that the s-curve camera in north Chattanooga serves as a safety measure. Gerald McCormick, State Representative District 26 said, "Teenagers would drive through there and drive too fast, and we would have deaths every year in the s-curves. When the cameras went in about 8 or 10 years ago, the kids stopped racing through there and we haven’t had any deaths there."

Contracts currently in place will run their course until they are ended. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam will either sign the bill into law or veto it sometime Thursday.