Cameras and Chemicals
I see you
A speeding ticket arrived in the mail last month. It indicated I could go to court or pay a $150 fine. Paying the fine is an admission of guilt, so far as I understood—unlike this article—but as whomever designed this process knows, $150 is less of a loss than to find, attend, and defend anything in any court of law. Anyone with even a modest wage would use up that value in time, not to mention attention and hassle, in at least the half day it would take to drive to a courthouse. Forget about paying a lawyer. So, I paid the man.
The weird part about the ticket was that I was never pulled over. My truck was clocked by a cloaked camera somewhere in my general home area. The ticket included photos of my truck in both the front and back as proof of my alleged crime. It’s odd, as a photographer I often have to get photo releases for clients, but I don’t remember signing anything for someone to take a photo of me, my truck, or my traveling family.
I then went on a mission to find out where the camera was located. It was somewhere around my daily route, or least a road I frequent. Located at last, I found it positioned at the bottom of a hill, painted in a matte black stealth color, perched along the edge of the trees and shadows. I must have not hit the breaks fast enough when I came down the decline.
This was not the only camera. The cameras, I came to find out, are everywhere along the roads I drive each week. They are on the way to my dog kennel, on the way to my archery range, on the way to my in-laws, on the way to the hospital, on the way to the public parks where I fish, and along major state routes. The two communities where the cameras are located are places I have family, where I went to school, and where I once lived. They are, I thought, my neighbors. Apparently this sentiment is a one-way street.
The communities in question are two of the most affluent in Ohio. By basic math, most people who drive by these communities are not. Somehow, the wealthiest people have found a way to tax the average resident of other communities by placing cameras on public roads that everyone uses, without consent.
I expect this type of resource succubus installation in major cities run by centralized bureaucracies, but now they have taken root on country roads in the suburbs. It’s most disappointing to see these cameras in my own community and network, but they are in other places, too. On my drives east for family and work I take the Turnpike, which has now dispensed with toll stops and has installed grotesque camera arches over the road, with little warning as to when to get an EZ Pass ready for scanning. In another adjacent community, an old fashioned speedometer sign with the yellow lights doesn’t even say thank you when you go the speed limit. Instead, bright bulbs distract me from the road and say I SEE YOU.
