It’s a High-Impact Drama, but the Price of Stardom Is Steep

AT 2:56 P.M. ON MONDAY, JULY 3, 2000, THE red Porsche’s front wheels pass over the limit line at the intersection of La Brea and Fountain avenues in West Hollywood. The car is doing 23 mph and the traffic light has been red for two-tenths of a second, as the picture on Mel Artiga’s computer monitor clearly shows.

“He’s in violation if he goes across,” Artiga says, eyes pinned on the screen. “If he stops where he is and doesn’t go across, he would not be in violation . . . .”

Artiga clicks to advance the 35-millimeter film to the next picture, taken a fraction of a second after the first. The Porsche is in the middle of the intersection, coming straight at the viewer. “. . . . And he goes across.”

Artiga zooms in on the car’s front license plate, and its number comes into view. He saves this image to his hard drive. Then Artiga zooms in on the face of the driver, who turns out to be a young woman with short, dark hair and sunglasses. This image he saves, too.

The images he has isolated will be matched against registration and driver’s license records from the California Department of Motor Vehicles and then double-checked. They also will be reviewed by West Hollywood law enforcement officials.

Within about a week, Ms. Porsche will experience a surprise increasingly common among Southern Californians. She’ll find in her mailbox an envelope containing the photographs, including her live-action portrait, which, no matter how flattering, won’t be worth the $270 it will cost her to get on the right side of the law.

On the 11th floor of downtown L.A.’s City National Bank Building, in the operations center of Lockheed Martin IMS, half-second dramas like the one on Mel Artiga’s computer screen play out hundreds of times a day.

Lockheed runs automated red-light photo-enforcement efforts for half a dozen local municipalities and agencies. Its computerized cameras--60-pound Dutch-made Gatsos triggered by underground sensors--currently monitor 47 intersections and railroad crossings in West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Oxnard, along MTA rail corridors and in unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. Four intersections in the city of L.A. will come under photo surveillance soon, with a dozen more to follow.

Oxnard was the first local municipality to adopt the cameras in a big way, assigning them to 11 intersections in 1997 and posting warning signs at the city limits. Since then, red-light violations in the city have decreased 40%. After one year, intersection accidents were down 22%.

“But the most significant thing is the change in red light-related fatalities,” says Senior Officer Don Mullville, traffic coordinator for the Oxnard Police Department. “Before this we were having four or five a year. Since the system’s been in place, we’ve had one.”

Between Jan. 1 and July 6, the 47 local sites monitored by Lockheed have yielded more than 17,500 citations. West Hollywood’s La Brea-Fountain intersection, where Ms. Porsche was nailed, produced 580 citations during May, an average of almost 20 per day.

These are remarkable figures, especially considering that between one-half and two-thirds of violations aren’t pursued because the cars pictured are missing front license plates or the views of plates or drivers’ faces are obscured.

With the number of cars on the road and attendant frustrations over delays increasing, both the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Federal Highway Administration have made reducing red-light violations a priority. The FHA reports that intersection accidents occur 1.8 million times a year and kill 7,800 people. It extols the automatic camera as a vital weapon for combating the trend.

Use of the new technology is in its infancy. Lockheed Martin IMS, which controls 80% of the market in North America, has only about 270 cameras currently operating. “I suspect there will be a continued movement toward cities adding new cameras and other cities launching programs of their own,” says Lockheed spokesman Terry Lynam. “I think it’s safe to say that we really have only scratched the surface.”

Twenty-one states permit, or are studying, automated photo-violations programs. Some, such as Arizona, already allow the use of automated video cameras to catch speeders, a somewhat more sensitive issue because, Lynam says, “the vast majority of people probably do not run red lights, but the vast majority of people probably do speed from time to time.”

Some worry about the Big Brother aspect of all this, but opinion polls have shown consistent public support for photo red-light operations.

Besides, what could be a more appropriate way to police the driving habits of a nation mesmerized by “reality” television? The shows playing on the computer screens of Lockheed’s analysts may be poor in production values, but they deliver maximum dramatic impact, as Ms. Porsche can now attest. Moreover, everyone who drives a car and occasionally gets impatient (not you or me, of course) is a potential cast member.

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James Ricci’s e-mail address is james.ricci@latimes.com