Knoxville’s red light cameras, those “silent sentinels” everyone loves to hate.
In fact Knoxville’s still fairly new, red light cameras are still causing so much controversy one frustrated motorist took a hunting rifle to one that had just photgraphed him and fired three shots into it.
His claim of self defense (he claimed the camera shot first) probably won’t hold much water in a Knoxville court; he is charged with reckless endangerment and felony vandalism.
Meanwhile, just down the road in Chattanooga, 176 lucky drivers are getting their red light camera fines refunded because one irate and apparently very observant, victim………er, wrongdoer, discovered the yellow light cycle was not timed correctly causing the caution light to only stay yellow 3 seconds instead of the 3.9 seconds mandated by safety standards.
Chattanooga’s city traffic engineer claims it was an “accidental mixup” related to turn arrow timing.
If any of these stories are true it might cause you to wonder how “accidentally’ that mixup really was.
Hmmmm, first time I have a few spare minutes I’m going to take my stop watch out and investigate a couple of traffic lights near my west Knoxville neighborhood and see if any “accidents” have befallen those yellow lights.
