RED LIGHT CAMERAS

STOP!

Don’t Break the Law

Running traffic lights is back in the news today after a traffic engineer was fined for proceeding against a yellow light and then being interviewed on New Zealand's Television One’s Close Up.

The traffic engineer believed that she had done nothing wrong and there was some discussion as to the clarity or otherwise of the Road Code. But wait, the Road Code should not have been the document under discussion. The Road Code is only a simplified interpretation of the law and has been known in the past to be at variance with the law. The applicable law is the Land Transport (Road User) Rule 2004

The rule, obviously drafted by a constipated wordiologist, states that ‘While a steady yellow signal in the form of a disc (a traffic light?) is displayed, - (a) a driver facing the signal must not enter the controlled area while the signal is displayed unless the driver’s vehicle is, when the signal first appears, so close to the controlled area that it cannot safely be stopped before entering the area.’

Similarly, the red light rule forbids a driver from entering the controlled area while facing a red light. There is no mention in this subsection of stopping safely because that option has gone and the driver (if he has complied with (a) above) is either already stopped or is committed to continuing through. The salient word in both situations is ‘entering’ rather than ‘proceeding.’ This is an important distinction but one that often escapes, innocently or deliberately, many enforcement officers. The law says a driver shall not ‘enter’ but the charge is usually worded ‘proceeding’ when it is quite clear that proceeding is often legal and in some situations may actually be obligatory in order to avoid blocking the intersection.

This takes me back to the late eighties when the then Auckland City Traffic Department had red light cameras and they booked me for proceeding against a red light. They had three beautiful colour photographs of my tour coach proceeding through the light at Grafton Bridge to prove their case. But from my interpretation of the law I believed that the photographs proved my defence. My case was that the yellow light appeared while I was too close to the intersection to safely stop and the red light appeared three seconds later after I had already entered the intersection by about two metres.

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The City Council disagreed and the case went to court where it was heard by two JPs. The JPs retired to consider their verdict saying they would be back in a couple of minutes. After thirty minutes their raised voices could be heard through the closed door. Their actual words were not distinguishable but I suspected that I had at least one person on my side. Forty minutes after retiring they came back with an incredible compromise – I was found not guilty, but I would have court costs of $65 to pay. In a way they were both winners.

But common sense told me that such a verdict was not legal but I paid the $65 and let the matter rest.

Years later, while applying for work overseas, I was asked to obtain a copy of my court record and, can you believe it, the record showed one conviction – proceeding against a red light.

I felt obliged to set the record straight. The Auckland City Council Traffic Department was long gone but the court was still there and down in the basement an obliging court officer went through the old records of the actual court proceedings. It transpired that the verdict had been illegal and the clerk who had entered the data had altered the verdict so that the computer would accept it.

So, with the help of an officer at Police Headquarters, the record was corrected and everyone lived happily ever after, except that the Department of Courts still owes me $65 plus interest from 1987.