Public vehicles show up on red-light cams, too

Thousands of people have gotten citations from the city's red-light camera system since it went online back in September — so you'd expect that some of them would be public employees driving public vehicles, right? Right. According to the Chronicle, more than 100 government and school vehicles have been tagged running red lights, resulting in some $8,000 in fines. The Chronicle got the information under the Texas Public Information Act; though the 100 citations are a very tiny fraction of the 34,000 issued so far, they're kind of troublesome. "Anytime anyone runs a red light, we have a concern about that," HISD spokesman Terry Abbott said (the school district has gotten five camera citations). "It's the same as speeding or anything else. We have policies in place to discipline drivers who don't follow the law."

Metro buses were the most-cited among taxpayer-owned vehicles, the Chron reports, with at least 26 violations totaling $1,950. Other Metro vehicles racked up $1,050 in citations, resulting in a bill to date of $3,000 for the transit agency. But the city of Houston has the biggest citation total: 45 citations for a total of $3,375 — that's 20 citations for police cruisers, four for fire department vehicles and 21 for some of the other 12,000 city-owned vehicles. Metro spokeswoman Raequel Roberts said cited drivers were required to pay their $75 citations and were suspended without pay for three days; a second citation can lead to a five-day suspension, and a third can result in dismissal. "Our job is to keep people safe, so obviously, when they run red lights we take it very seriously," Roberts said. At City Hall, they're more understanding, sort of: "I think the mayor has said good, upstanding citizens sometimes make a mistake and run though a red light. That's dangerous," spokesman Patrick Trahan said. As the Chronicle noted, at least one of the city vehicles that breezed through a red light was a six-ton International 4400 truck — dangerous, yep.

It's true that people occasionally run red lights by accident, and it's true that the number of public vehicles cited by the camera system is very low. But the issue here is that many of these vehicles are either big enough or carrying enough people that there could be serious damage if they got into accidents. We suppose we'll just have to keep an eye out, and so will the agencies involved: "Obviously, our goal is to see zero [citations]," Metro's Roberts said. "Safety is paramount to us."