They see us when we’re speeding, they know when we run lights, they know when we park illegally, but we won’t pay up without a fight!

Last week, we wrote about the transit implications of Adrian Fenty’s “200 Goals in 100 Days.” The mayor promised a lot of things, but the point everyone jumped on in the comments was his pledge to install traffic cameras on street sweepers. The cameras would photo-enforce the parking regulations that keep one side of most streets clear for cleaning one morning a week, using license plate recognition technology to automatically issue tickets to cars parked illegally on street sweeping day. The verdict seemed to be that people were none too pleased with the city’s latest foray into photo-enforcement of parking laws.

Since everyone seemed so uppity about the issue, we thought we’d offer our own thoughts on them, as well as the city’s other pesky traffic cameras (full disclosure: we’ve found ourselves in the crosshairs of a traffic camera several times). Since brevity is the soul of wit, we’ll sum up our position in two words: So what?!?

For a slightly more verbose explanation, keep reading.

Photo by takomabibelot