Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard concludes his outstanding series investigating automated traffic enforcement problems with two final essays, Part 4: “Getting Rear-Ended by the Law“:

cameras were installed in 1998. Between the years 1997 and 2000, accidents increased at 5 of 13 intersections for which Howard County’s Department of Public Works provided statistics. Rear-end accidents increased at 7; they more than doubled at 4, tripled at one, and quintupled at one. All told, the red-light-camera intersections reported a 21 percent increase in rear-end accidents, while total accidents increased 15.9 percent. Figures for all other county intersections also show an increase in accidents, but a smaller one (a 13.4 increase in total accidents and an 8.5 percent increase in rear-end accidents).

…and Part 5: “Fighting the Good Fight“:

BY NOW, it should be fairly clear that even if numbers don’t lie, the same can’t be said for the people who use them. All that is left are the ugly particulars, the tales of woe and dread, of inconvenience and larceny, of the mistrust that has arisen between municipalities and the citizens they gouge with red-light cameras and photo radar. While the cities’ most common refrain is that the majority of the public supports the technology, the public sure has a bizarre way of showing it.

Across the United States and Canada–where two provincial elections have swung for politicians promising to scrap local photo radar programs–citizens have made it clear why the supposedly beloved technology is installed inside bullet-proof casings. In Anchorage, photo radar operators were pelted with water balloons before cameras were finally banned. In Denver, police thought somebody fired on their photo radar van, though the projectile turned out just to be a rock. Elsewhere, camera units have been smeared with lubricant, pulled out of the ground with tow chains, and rammed by automobiles. In Paradise Valley, Arizona, where the city council once contemplated shooting motorists with photo radar cameras concealed in cactuses, one civic-minded citizen decided to shoot back, emptying 30 rounds of bullets into two photo radar units.

Bet that last felt good — emptying all those rounds into a photo radar unit, I mean. ‘S like fast-slapping a mime until he squeals (or at least until he escapes from that invisible little box he’s always playin’ around in and bolts like a spooked bunny…)

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