Dayton's Red-Light Cameras vs. the State of Ohio: Where the Fight Stands

Published April 7, 2015 · New Laws

Two weeks ago, on March 23, 2015, Ohio's new traffic-camera law took effect. Five days before that, the City of Dayton sued the State of Ohio to stop it. And last Thursday, April 2, Judge Barbara Gorman of the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court ruled that the law's central provisions violate the Ohio Constitution and enjoined the State from enforcing them against the city.

If you drive through Dayton, the practical result is that the cameras at the city's intersections are still running, without a police officer standing next to them, and the tickets are still coming. If you have been hurt in an intersection crash, the fight has a different significance, which I will get to below.

How we got here

Dayton has operated an automated camera system since 2002, when the city enacted an ordinance authorizing red-light cameras at intersections. In 2010 the system was expanded to speed enforcement. The city now runs more than 36 red-light and speed cameras. The tickets are civil, not criminal: a notice goes to the vehicle's registered owner with photographs, the violation, and a fine, reviewed by a police officer and contested, if at all, before an administrative hearing officer rather than in municipal court. No points go on the driver's record.

In December 2014, as I described in Ohio Reins in Red-Light Cameras, the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 342 and the Governor signed it on December 19. The bill did not ban cameras. Instead it imposed statewide conditions on any city that chooses to use them, codified at R.C. 4511.092 through 4511.0914. The most important:

• An officer must be present. Under R.C. 4511.093(B)(1), a city may use a camera to detect and enforce violations only if a law enforcement officer is present at the device at all times it is operating.
• New cameras need a study and a warning period. R.C. 4511.095 requires a safety study of the proposed location, a public information campaign, published notice, and a 30-day period of warnings rather than fines before any new camera goes live.
• Speed thresholds. R.C. 4511.0912 bars camera speeding tickets unless the driver was more than 6 mph over the limit in a school zone or park, or 10 mph over anywhere else.
• Insurance protection. R.C. 3937.411 forbids insurers from raising premiums or denying coverage because of a camera ticket.

The law also sets out how tickets are issued, how a driver can pay or contest them, and what the camera manufacturer must do to certify the equipment.

Dayton's lawsuit

Dayton's position is that the officer-present rule, the pre-deployment requirements, and the speed thresholds are not real traffic regulations at all. They are, in the city's view, a way for the legislature to make camera programs so expensive and impractical that cities abandon them, which the city says infringes on its powers under the Home Rule Amendment, Article XVIII, Section 3 of the Ohio Constitution. That provision lets municipalities adopt local police regulations as long as they do not conflict with "general laws." The Ohio Supreme Court has previously held that cities have home-rule authority to run civil camera-enforcement programs; the question now is whether S.B. 342 is a general law that overrides them.

The State's position is that S.B. 342 is exactly that: a comprehensive, uniform, statewide regulation of traffic cameras that applies to every city alike and tells drivers, insurers, and manufacturers what to do, not just cities.

On April 2, Judge Gorman agreed with Dayton in part. She found that R.C. 4511.093(B)(1) and (3), 4511.095, and 4511.0912 violate home rule and enjoined their enforcement. She did not strike down the entire bill. The remaining provisions, including the insurance-premium protection and the ticketing and hearing procedures, stand.

The State is expected to appeal to the Second District Court of Appeals, and whichever way that court rules, the Ohio Supreme Court is the likely final stop. For now, the injunction is in place, and Dayton's cameras operate as they did before March 23.

Where I come down, as a former police officer and an injury lawyer

I spent nineteen years with the Dayton Police Department, and I have spent more than thirty years representing people hurt in crashes. I have no stake in the home-rule debate, and reasonable people disagree about whether cameras are a safety tool or a revenue tool.

What I do know is that the crashes caused by red-light running and speeding at intersections are among the worst I see. A T-bone collision at 45 miles per hour does not produce whiplash. It produces brain injuries, pelvic fractures, and funerals. Anything that deters drivers from running lights at a busy Dayton intersection is, from the victim's side of the courtroom, a good thing. The officer-present requirement, if it ultimately takes effect, will likely mean fewer operating cameras, because no city can station an officer at 36 intersections around the clock. Whether that changes driver behavior is an empirical question the General Assembly did not wait to answer.

What camera footage means in your injury case

Here is the part that matters whether the cameras stay or go. In a civil claim after an intersection crash, the question is almost always who had the green light. I wrote about that proof problem in Intersection Crashes: Proving Who Had the Green Light. The other driver will say the light was green. You will say it was red. Without more, it is one word against another, and the insurance company will use that uncertainty to discount your claim.

A camera at the intersection changes that. The system records the signal phase and the vehicle's position, and the images can show a driver entering on red whether or not a ticket was ever issued. Even where the camera did not capture the crash itself, the system's records can establish the timing of the signal cycle.

Three cautions:

• The footage is not kept forever. Camera vendors and cities retain data on their own schedules. A preservation letter should go to the city and the vendor within days of the crash, not months. The same is true of nearby business cameras, which I discussed in Photographs and Evidence.
• A camera ticket is not the same as fault. The civil camera notice goes to the registered owner, not necessarily the driver, and it is not a finding of negligence in your case. It is evidence, often powerful evidence, but the crash still has to be reconstructed.
• Fewer cameras means more reliance on other proof. If the officer-present rule eventually takes effect and Dayton reduces its camera program, the burden of proving who ran the light shifts back to witnesses, physical evidence, and crash reconstruction. That makes early investigation more important, not less.

What this means for you

If you were hurt at a Dayton intersection, the city's dispute with the State does not change your rights against the driver who hit you, but it may change the evidence available to prove your case. Whether a camera was operating at your intersection on the day of your crash is a question we can answer quickly, and the footage, if it exists, is worth preserving before anyone decides it is no longer needed. Our intersection collision and car accident practices handle that investigation from the first call.