![]() Carroll noted that Breathalyzers had to go through a long permitting process before they could be employed. I decided to run that by another Republican legal scholar, Assemblyman Mike Carroll of Morris. That brought up an obvious question: If the cameras are already in use, why do we need a bill to permit them? "I don't know why they need the bill," the Republican replied. Kip Bateman, he told me the cameras are also in use the Somerset County town of Branchburg, where he is municipal prosecutor. When I called a co-sponsor of the bill, state Sen. But like me - and Joe for that matter - O'Scanlon was surprised to hear that the cameras are already in use in Jefferson Township in Morris County. (Note this video clip in which one company got a couple of talking heads to endorse the cameras - despite the videos showing the cameras don't deter bad drivers.) That's why O'Scanlon is determined to stop a bill now before the Legislature that would permit these companies to extend the cameras to buses. As with the red-light cameras, the company's propaganda video for the cameras shows cars whizzing by kids - while the cameras are turned on and thus failing to do their job. But there's no evidence they work as advertised. "Even if these cameras worked as advertised, it would take 20 years to save a single life," said O'Scanlon. He cited a study by the National Motorists Association put the number of child fatalities in such accidents at 36. But this is not a widespread problem, said O'Scanlon. The pitch is that those cameras on school buses will solve the serious problem of schoolchildren being run over while getting into and out of school buses. ![]() These school-bus cameras are just the latest threat, he said. He's a Monmouth County Republican who led the fight against the red-light cameras, O'Scanlon has declared a jihad on the new technology designed to monitor motorists whenever they make the mistake of leaving their driveways. These school-bus cameras represent yet another assault on the driving public according to the guy who led the campaign to get rid of the red-light cameras. Whatever happened, it was recorded on a video camera mounted on the bus. "I have no memory of this at all," he said. But Joe couldn't even recall what happened. ![]() The offense carries a heavy fine as well as five points, almost half the number needed to get your license suspended. One guy - whom I'll call "Joe" because he doesn't want to aggravate the prosecutors while the ticket's pending - told me how he opened his mailbox to find a ticket for passing a stopped school bus. Two guys wrote to tell me about receiving traffic tickets in the mail for offenses that had happened weeks before. The law in question would prohibit what happened to a couple of Jersey drivers who contacted me after a recent column on the effort to bring back those red-light cameras that were shut down last year after a five-year trial period. It just seems to violate some unwritten law.
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