![]() City photograph shows 2.9-second yellow light. In throwing out another driver's ticket July 29, Kelley wrote, "inconsistent evidence. ![]() Citizen prevails," Kelley wrote in the notes field on his computer for both the Baikie tickets in his Aug. In Baikie's cases, the hearing officer who tossed both tickets was William Kelley, who records show has thrown out 29 tickets since April because of short yellow lights. Sussman also tossed an additional 32 tickets with short yellow times at hearings in which he cited no specific reason on public records. Records show that Sussman cited short yellow times 18 times on Xerox tickets from April through August. More than two dozen judges cited short yellow lights for rejecting citations, the Tribune found. Taken together, that means 521 tickets - more than a third of all those rejected since April - had short yellow times. They often don't provide written explanations for rejecting a ticket when drivers appeal in person at a tape-recorded hearing. The Tribune found an additional 299 cases in which tossed tickets had yellow lights under 3 seconds but hearing officers did not specify their reasons. All but three of those tickets were from Xerox. In 222 cases, they noted in their written explanation that a yellow interval under 3 seconds was to blame. That's just horrible."Īdministrative law judges have thrown out 1,511 tickets from April 1 through Aug. "I really think they need to fix this because so many people just pay these things without even thinking about it. ![]() "I didn't even know about the 3-second rule," said Baikie, who appealed both tickets by mail arguing that she made two legal right turns. "I am really disappointed with the city, and upset that they would try to take advantage of people like that," said Baikie, 38, of Skokie.īoth tickets were overturned by an administrative law judge because the yellow lights were too short, records show. The security guard was ticketed twice within 20 minutes on May 18 on her way home from work. Gail Baikie was among the drivers who won because of short yellow times. Officials at Xerox and Redflex declined to be interviewed for this report, referring all questions to the city.Īsked why hearing officers hired by Emanuel's administration to enforce the traffic laws are routinely throwing out the tickets if the time is allowable, Scheinfeld said the hearing officers are independent. But the Redflex tickets rarely went below 3 seconds, the newspaper found. In the course of uncovering troubling and unexplained spikes involving tens of thousands of tickets during Redflex's tenure, the Tribune reported in July that it found hundreds of cases where yellow light times fluctuated between 4 and 3 seconds.
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