City going high-tech with camera system

The City of Diboll will soon be going high-tech with the installation of red-light cameras at the city's three major intersections, Lumberjack Drive/Harris Street, Hines/Judd streets, and Thompson/Dennis streets, as traffic passes through town on U.S. 59.

Diboll Police Chief Kent Havard, along with members of the Diboll City Council and City Manager Kenneth Williams, have been working with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and Nestor Traffic Systems, a corporation based in Providence, Rhode Island, to put into place an automated red light enforcement system at intersections within Diboll that will monitor the traffic and record violations such as running a red light or causing an accident.

There have been a lot of concerns from residents as to how this system would work. According to Diboll City Manager Kenneth Williams, the violations would follow a procedure similar to what is already in place for people receiving parking tickets. Once it is determined that a violation has taken place, a ticket would be mailed to the owner of the car and there would be no record of the violation on the owners' driving record.

A question that comes to mind though is; who determines whether or not an actual violation takes place? “We [the police] have the final say,” says Chief Havard. “I will come in the morning review the video I receive from Nestor and determine whether or not it was an actual violation,” he went on to explain. According to Havard, the review process will include his opinion of the violation and Nestor's opinion of the occurrence, but as he stated it is the police who have the final say.

The fine for violating the stoplight would only be $100 as compared to the $250 fine one would receive from being stopped by an officer. Of that $100 Nestor would receive $35 and the rest would be in the hands of the city. “The program will come at no cost to the city,” Havard explained, “When I started looking at this program my concern was not with revenue but with safety.” The reasons Havard e believes the system will cause people to act more cautiously and that would make it safer especially since two of the intersections have school traffic moving through them.

All three stoplights in Diboll will be equipped with the sensors that will record the multitude of north and south bound traffic that comes through the city every day. Expect the system to be in place by this summer following a 16-day study that Nestor and TxDOT will administer to see if the program will work in Diboll.