ORLANDO, Fla. — An Orlando resident who has been battling the city's red-light cameras for months said he has data that shows thousands of drivers shouldn't have received tickets.
David Shaw told Channel 9 he used the same formula as St. Petersburg resident Matt Florell, whose work prompted St. Petersburg commissioners to get rid of red-light cameras.
"St. Petersburg is dropping their program, effective next month," Shaw said.
He said some Orlando drivers received tickets for passing through a red light one-tenth of a second after it turned red, while other Florida cities don't ticket until at least half of a second.
According to Shaw, he was able to get data from the city of Orlando that shows thousands of questionable red-light tickets.
"It's the equivalent of giving a vehicle owner a speeding ticket for one mile per hour above the speed limit," Shaw said.
A city spokesperson said, "The city of Orlando believes that if someone breaks the law by running a red light, a violation should be issued."
According to Shaw, the city shortened the yellow-light time at three intersections after the cameras were installed. He said roughly 2,200 drivers wouldn't have received tickets if the yellow-light times had remained the same.
"It was obviously shortened to increase revenue at the expense of safety," Shaw said.
But the spokesperson said light-time changes came after a Florida Department of Transportation study and "this reduction never resulted in yellow-light times being below the required FDOT minimum."
Shaw believes the red-light camera program could end up costing the city money. He said he's still working on collecting more data and will continue fighting the red-light cameras.