Caught red-handed

TONY DODERO

Every day for the last couple weeks, I called my wife Beth and had

her check the mail for a certain telltale envelope.

“Did it come?” I would ask.

“Nope, still nothing,” she’d say. “Maybe it didn’t catch you.”

Yeah, maybe not.

Maybe when I saw that flash go off in the middle of the

intersection at 19th Street and Newport Boulevard at Triangle Square,

the red-light camera wasn’t aimed at me. Maybe it was catching the

poor saps next to me, or a car going in the opposite direction.

The longer the time passed, the more confident I felt that someone

else was getting that envelope.

Then, on Wednesday, I was talking with my wife again when all of a

sudden she stops mid- sentence.

“Uh oh,” she said.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Guess what you got in the mail?”

She didn’t have to say any more.

So there you have it. Your faithful editor of your favorite

hometown newspaper is a lawbreaker. Caught red-handed, so to speak.

Snared by a dreaded red-light camera.

I didn’t mean to do it. I was changing lanes trying to get to my

barber shop on Broadway when all of a sudden I looked up and ... oh,

what’s the use. I was caught.

And what’s all this going to set me back?

Three hundred and 26 smackers.

Or $378 if I want to go to traffic school and have this blemish

washed from my record. I’ll most likely choose the latter.

To be sure, I’ve been a staunch supporter of red-light cameras.

In a column on the topic that I wrote in October of 2001, I said:

“I think the bigger more important question needs to be: will red

light runners hit the brakes more often if they know they are being

photographed? I believe the answer is yes. And if it means avoiding

another tragic incident, then it’s all worth it.”

And despite this latest gouge to my pocketbook, I still believe

that, even though I obviously wasn’t bright enough to hit the brakes

on the yellow light.

Aside from the monetary issues, red-light running kills people.

In that same column, I cited the case of Tracy Wolonsky, an

Eastbluff mother of four who was killed when a red-light runner

broadsided her in her van.

That same column noted some stark numbers. During a two and a half

year period from January of 1998 to May of 2000, Costa Mesa police

recorded 881 traffic collisions related to red-light running, nearly

half resulted in injuries and two in fatalities.

In a story about the red-light cameras by our police reporter

Deepa Bharath that appeared in the Dec. 19 Daily Pilot, Costa Mesa

police Lt. Karl Schuler forecasted that the red-light cameras would

bring down those accident totals by 40%.

And at the time of that story’s publication, some 4,000 drivers

had smiled to the red-light cameras in the city’s busiest

intersections, according to the police.

You can add me to that list.

So I’ll write that check and go to traffic school and pay my debt.

But every time I see four or five cars deep running the red light as

they turn left onto Adams Avenue from Harbor, I will just hope and

pray that they too will get that envelope in the mail.

And, oh, yeah, I’m figuring out a different route to get to the

barber shop.