Drivers, listen up! For the next 30 days, if you don`t stop on red at the intersection of Brambleton and Saint Paul as well as the intersection at Little Creek and Chesapeake Boulevard, you`ll get a warning. But in one month, you`ll get a fine for $50.
“If you don`t want to participate in the red light safety camera program, then just don`t run the red light,” says Jody Ryan, of Redflex Traffic Systems.
Ryan is with Redflex, the company leasing the cameras to Norfolk at no cost to the taxpayer.
The company charges around $4,000 a camera, with a guarantee that the city will generate at least that much revenue in traffic fines. If they don`t, they don`t have to pay.
“I like the red light systems. I think it is important to be safe on the roads. A lot of accidents cause a lot of injuries, so I have always been a fan of them,” says Jared Martin, a driver.
And with precious cargo in the back seat, Jared Martin hopes these cameras will make the roadways safer.
More than 50,000 people cross through both of these intersections each day causing 29 accidents at the Brambleton, Saint Paul intersection and 37 accidents at the Little Creek Chesapeake Boulevard intersection in the past three years. But with these here now police hope those numbers will go down.
“And if these prove as successful at reducing accidents as they have in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, then we are confident that we will be able to gradually expand to these other intersections in the city,” says Chris Amos of the Norfolk Police Department.
