Blitz Cameras

This is one of those odd Germany stories that takes a minute to explain in full detail.

Over the past couple of years.....there's been this trend toward 'blitz-machines'.....the cameras that check your speed and take a picture of your car if you are speeding.

For years, it was an odd thing if your town had one.  Bigger cities?  They all had five or six, but since 2010.....I'd say that things have gone into turbo mode as a company now offers the installation services and gets a contract with a town to provide a blitz camera.  So now....small towns (even those with  two-thousand residents).....will have a camera.  The purpose?  They will tell you it's to stop speeding.....but they generally pull in tons of money from the cameras.....well....up until recently.

With people getting blitzed left and right.....the trend now is noting where the cameras area located and drive slower around those areas.  So, business-wise......you install a camera and six months later start to notice a trend.....lesser speeders.

The take for the company?  Four Euro and fifty cents.  You can do the math.....a thousand violators a month means 4,500 Euro for the company.

Well, small towns got into this process and signed contracts.....then put up cameras in low frequency traffic areas.  Folks got smart.....drove a lesser speed......and six months later the blitz company woke up to realize a camera was now pulling in less than a 1,000 Euro a month.....which makes this whole unprofitable for them.

This week in Hessen, several communities got a note which basically said that the commercial company was quitting the contract within their town and taking the camera out.....the profit was marginal.

Naturally, this has peeved off the community because they got use to thirty-odd Euro from the fines, and were taking in six to eight thousand Euro a month easily.....adding to the profit of the town.  They say they will fight the termination notice.

In my village of 4,000 people.....we have zero blitz cameras and I doubt if they'd ever add them.  In the village over the hill of 8,000 residents?  They've got four cameras.  Three of them are on major streets, but the fourth is on some minor street.  From the 4th camera.....I doubt if they get more than six violators a day off it.....most are folks who live off the street and it's peeved them to a major degree.

The Wiesbaden crowd?  They probably generate 40,000 Euro per week off the twenty-five-odd cameras they keep around town.

All of this brings me to the odd topic of what the blitz camera fad was about......money-generator or safety device?  I think ninety-fiver percent of people would say it's a money-generator.....which rarely decreases the speed in the affected area.  It would be curious if positive numbers on fewer accidents occurred.