Gotcha!

Washington's report states that rear-end collisions increased on the affected section of freeway during the program, but that the number of crashes overall — and, most important, their severity — appears to have decreased.

Though he concluded that more research must be done, city and state officials seized on the report as evidence that photo enforcement should be expanded, leading to the January 30 vote in Scottsdale to turn Loop 101 cameras back on.

Washington's final report is expected this spring.

Larry Talley, a traffic studies analyst for Mesa, says he saw similar positive trends in crashes when he checked into the effectiveness of red-light cameras, which are more accepted by the public in polls than speed cameras.

But the question of safety is different from that of credibility, which could be taken into account when deciding whether to exploit the weaknesses of photo enforcement.

The fact that red-light cameras may make Mesa roads safer sure didn't stop Councilman Whalen from fighting his ticket.

Besides, less legally painful methods make roads safer, too. Talley says installing left-turn arrows makes major intersections far safer than putting in red-light cameras.

Then there's the profit angle, in which cities are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Scottsdale earned $800,000 from the Loop 101 program, mostly from ticketing people going less than 80 mph. The city expects to earn hundreds of thousands more in the coming months. Speeders weighing their options with a ticket might consider why they'd want to help enrich a wealthy city like Scottsdale. On the other hand, Mesa lost $200,000 on its program in 2005. Could that money have been better spent elsewhere?

Meanwhile, the photo-enforcement companies and the state, which taxes the fines cities make off all traffic tickets, make money even when the cities don't. The 2006 nine-month freeway program alone earned $2.3 million for Arizona in such taxes. The companies' cut of the tickets is a quarter or more of the fine.

Why not adopt the attitude of state police, who see Loop 101 speed cameras as major annoyances?

Before Scottsdale activated its Loop 101 test program, city officials pondered what to do about the violations by law enforcement vehicles that inevitably would be recorded. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and Arizona Department of Public Safety didn't want to see the violations, city officials say, so Scottsdale honored that wish.

The deal allowed patrol cars to speed freely when speeding was justified for their work — and also when it was not.

Police vehicles draw only the same toothless violation notices that corporations receive, and could eighty-six them just as easily. But the deal to ignore notices struck at the heart of the system's credibility. While municipal police routinely hold their own officers accountable for photo violations, checking call logs and making them explain their actions, the DPS and the Sheriff's Office seemed to be saying, "Do as I say, not as I do."

Sheriff Joe Arpaio denied he was part of any deal, while the DPS remained mum on the question.

Once Scottsdale began forwarding the violation notices to the DPS, the agency felt compelled to investigate each one to make sure officers had a valid reason for speeding. But it didn't mean they had to like it.

DPS Commander Tom Woodward says patrolmen found the Loop 101 cameras onerous. He said they may have put the public's safety at risk.

"It deterred officers assigned to the East Valley from working that area," Woodward says. "We still responded to calls, but officers were not in that area working traffic proactively as much as they were prior to photo enforcement."

To recap: Corporations don't have to pay. Family trusts don't have to pay. Cities that use photo enforcement ignore photo tickets from other cities. Lawyers and former police officers contest valid tickets just to see if the judge will let them off. State police are willing to put public safety at risk because it's so demoralizing to explain why they were speeding.

But if you, the ordinary schmo, get caught by the cameras, you're supposed to bend over and take it.

To make the system more even-handed, lawmakers could make vehicle owners liable for the tickets rather than drivers, as with parking tickets.

Denver went this route a few years ago, eliminating penalty points and lowering fines to make its program more palatable to the public. The Denver PD's Commander Lamb says lawmakers in his state gutted photo enforcement out of concern for the Big-Brotherly nature of the system. Now, it's an on-your-honor program, he says. If people don't pay their tickets, no one cares.

Arizona lawmakers debated a similar system a few years ago, but insurance companies lobbied against it, saying they needed to know whether their customers were driving poorly and getting tickets.

This "vehicle liability" method has its own drawbacks — a big one is that some people would be punished for violations they didn't commit. But it would be fairer to everyone.

Whether the Arizona Legislature will or even could close all the loopholes remains an open question. But when two Republican lawmakers heard from New Times that responding to notices was voluntary for corporations, they took notice.