Seventy-one percent of potential violations caught by SafeSpeed and Safelight cameras wind up as traffic tickets, according to reports provided by Lafayette Consolidated Government’s Traffic and Transportation Department. The reports show the traffic cameras recording a total of 46, 995 potential violations – 7, 832 a month – from the six months of operation from Oct. 1 through March 31. Through the end of March, only 28, 021 tickets had been issued, with 7,658 potential violations still being processed (it takes about a month for camera recordings to be reviewed and tickets issued).
Of those already processed, a total of 11,316 potential violations were discarded due to issues with picture quality, vehicle registration, invalid offenses and other problems. The most frequent reasons listed for dismissing violations was cameras capturing paper registration plates (2,236 instances) and a case of "two vehicles in beam" (1,677 instances). Potential violations were also dismissed because of blurry images (1045), license plate obstruction (1026), false radar triggers (602) and capturing emergency vehicles (152).