Stop lights

Jack McCloy of Baldwin was driving in Queens when a close call at a red light generated some unintended correspondence New Yorkers are becoming all too familiar with: a $50 red-light camera ticket.

Most drivers simply shrug or cluck resignedly upon receiving one of these notices — according to McCloy, Nassau County collected over $10 million last year from the tickets, and New York City reaped over $55 million — but McCloy, who has previously engaged the county over vehicular matters, is not one to benignly accept the rulings of his municipality. He has initiated a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court challenging not only his ticket, but the utilization of red-light cameras in Nassau County and statewide.

“The use of red-light cameras seems to be a revenue-generating tool instead of a safety device,” McCloy said, “and I aim to convince the court that unless they are used properly, they should be prohibited completely.”

Seeing red

The germ of McCloy’s argument — one that has no doubt occurred to many drivers cited with stoplight violations — is that the timing of the lights, and especially the yellow light, seems intended not to allow drivers to stop safely, but rather to trap them into a violation. McCloy, in short, believes that the timing of yellow lights has been intentionally configured to generate income for the county.

“If the amber light signal is short-timed, it does not give the approaching driver enough time to stop before the red-light camera operates,” McCloy said. “If the amber light signal is short-timed, it is the functional equivalent to providing no amber light signal at all, and that is entrapment.”