On Friday, Columbus mayor Keith Gaskin vetoed the city council’s decision to allow a private company to install cameras in the city that would be used to ticket uninsured drivers.
Gaskin said he vetoed the measure because of ethical and legal concerns. A claim by a spokesman for the company that would install the cameras said there was a state Attorney General’s opinion that using the cameras for this purpose is lawful was not verified when the council passed the measure on April 5.
The motion passed, 5-1, so unless three council members change their minds, the council will have the required four votes to override the mayor’s veto, allowing the new program to start.
Once the cameras are in place, I suppose folks who are out there driving around without insurance will just have to take a city bus.
Oh, wait.
We don’t have a city bus service, an idea that emerged seemingly out of the ether 10 years ago — a something-for-nothing scheme that fell apart after a year’s worth of haggling, missed deadlines and inertia.
It might not be entirely fair to compare the camera idea to that of the failed Lawrence Transit System bus service of a decade ago, but there is at least one troublesome parallel between the two.
Both are ideas nobody asked for or even seemed to have been considering. In both cases, a company rep simply showed up, made his pitch (“Did I mention this is FREE??!!!”) and the council gobbled it up.
Both plans warranted closer security given the potential impact it would have on residents.
While I don’t know any rational person — apart from a Libertarian, perhaps — who is in favor of people driving around without insurance, I do understand the reticence on the part of the mayor and vice-mayor Joseph Mickens, who was the lone “no” vote on the cameras.
The primary reason people don’t have insurance is that they cannot afford it, either because they are poor or because their driving record is so bad as to make insurance prohibitively expensive.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the latter, but I can at least understand the dilemma for poor folks. As the mayor said, choosing between putting food on the table or paying the monthly insurance premium is a position no one welcomes.
Under the camera plan, those ticketed for no insurance could pay a $300 fee and enter a diversion program, which would also require them to purchase car insurance. The company installing the cameras – Securix — splits that $300 fee with the city. Everybody wins, right?
Whether this is a good idea or a bad idea depends largely on the purpose of the cameras and whether you think the cameras will achieve that purpose.
If the purpose of the idea is to create revenue for the city and Securix, it’s likely to be a good idea, especially for the city, which won’t share any of the costs.
But if the purpose is to make our streets safer, count me among the skeptics.
I’m not much concerned with the legality of the program since Securix already operates the system in Ocean Springs and has a considerable investment that would be wiped out were the cameras found to be illegal.
But I do think the idea that the program is going to significantly reduce the number of uninsured drivers is built on a fundamental misunderstanding of human behavior.
Folks are going to drive, period. Those who cannot afford or obtain insurance are going to drive and take their chances. For those people, the cameras will just mean the stakes are higher.
The notion that someone ticketed on these cameras is going to pay a $300 fee and purchase insurance suggests that that person already had the means to buy insurance but just chose not to.
That might fit a few people here and there.
But for most uninsured drivers, these cameras are not as much a deterrent as a calculated risk.
I fail to understand how this improves safety, if that’s the real intent.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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