STATE TO CROSS LINE WITH FINES VIA PHOTO-RADAR.

Byline: Tom McClintock 

MOTORISTS are about to be fleeced by a network of automated highway robbery at intersections throughout California under legislation that could go to the governor's desk as early as Monday.

Senate Bill 1136, now pending on the Assembly floor with bipartisan support, authorizes the permanent use of split-second photographic devices to issue tickets to every vehicle that crosses the limit line at an intersection - even by a few inches - once the light has changed.

Last year, the Legislature raised the fine for running a red light to a whopping $271, and allowed companies that make photographic ticketing systems to get a cut of every traffic ticket they produce. Combined, these laws create a relentless, diabolical money machine for government and its private-sector friends.

One company, U.S. Public Technologies in San Diego, ``donates'' the equipment in return for the lion's share of the take, assuring big profits for the company - up 30 percent last year - and the rapid proliferation of ``photo-red'' tickets.

A unit already in operation in Los Angeles is writing up to 100 tickets per day at one intersection - that's $27,000 of gross revenue daily. A Maryland official installed photo-red at two intersections last month. ``We don't want to make money on this,'' he explained. ``We want to stop people running red lights.'' Yeah, right.

True, they catch the scofflaws who brazenly race through the intersection while innocent drivers must swerve out of the way. And they've got it coming.

But how about the busy mom who misjudges the yellow light by a fraction of a second. Do we really want to take her grocery money for the next month? How about the elderly gentleman driving his wife to the doctor who hesitates for a moment and harmlessly crosses the limit line by a few inches before he stops? Do we really want to take a third of his next Social Security check? Or the harried college student, whose split-second decision causes her to continue through the intersection a moment after the light changes rather than slam on her brakes and risk being rear-ended, do we really want to take away half of her book money for the semester? The traffic officer can tell the difference between a reckless act and a harmless misjudgment. The camera can't.

Rapacious governments around the world have begun installing automated equipment to boost traffic citation revenues. Each time, citizens are told that this is a public-safety effort to make the streets safer. Yet, in Australia, more than 80 percent of the tickets were issued not to incorrigible scofflaws but to common folks who received one or fewer tickets per year. In Calgary, Canada, the number of photo-radar tickets skyrocketed more than fivefold in a period of three years.

According to a 1996 expose on the Canadian experience with photo-radar for speeders, ``In Ontario, photo-radar was installed on the province's busiest freeway. Once the revenue started rolling in by the millions, plans were made to extend the system to other roads. At first, radar guns set off the cameras when they spotted a car going well over the speed limit. Within weeks, the operators discovered that they could generate more revenue with the turn of a knob, and the tolerance was turned down to (6.2 miles per hour).''

Californians are now just one vote of the Assembly away from the same future. If experience is any indicator, average Californians who have never had a ticket in their lives will soon look with dread to their mailboxes, wondering if there is another $271 fine they can't afford from a photo taken at an intersection they don't even remember being at.

But there is one silver lining.

In Ontario, voter outrage over these abuses wiped out the provincial government's liberal majority in the next election. The first act of Ontario's new conservative majority was to junk the province's automated highway robbers.