Redflex Holdings Limited, the Australian corporate parent of the embattled red-light camera company, announced in official financial filings on Tuesday that it had lost more than A$26.2 million ($19.8 million) during the first half of its 2017 fiscal year, which concluded at the end of 2016.
A notable factor that explains the company's massive drop in profits—compared to a loss of A$2.7 million (~$2 million) during the same period a year earlier—is the recent $20 million settlement that the company reached with the City of Chicago as part of a corruption investigation.
Redflex also noted decreased revenue in the United States and largely flat revenue everywhere else. In a statement written by Adam Gray, the company's chairman, Redflex would now seek increased opportunities in Latin America to try to make up for it.
Source:
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 05 2017, @03:04PM (3 children)
They've bombed out in most of the more civilized world, so they want to make it up in the slightly lesser civilized world? And, if that fails, they'll go full third world.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05 2017, @03:38PM (2 children)
Technologically advanced != civilized. The US is more savage than many other countries, on a number of metrics.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 05 2017, @04:04PM (1 child)
You're right of course. But, Mexico's drug cartels aren't exactly civilized. Brazil's open sewer in Rio isn't civilized. The decades long cocaine wars in Colombia isn't civilized.
You want civilized? Try Bolivia. They kicked the DEA out of their country, and successfully reduced the cultivation of cocaine in their country.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday March 06 2017, @05:43PM
El Salvador and Honduras are the most violent countries on the planet. So I wouldn't call that "the slightly lesser civilized world". You're a lot safer in just about any place in Africa (usually unfairly considered the bottom of "third world") than Central America.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday March 05 2017, @03:23PM (3 children)
Redflex has been high on my list of evil companies ever since getting a ticket from one of their red light cameras that took advantage of an improperly short yellow. The others (notably American Traffic Solutions) are no better. The whole idea puts profit ahead of safety and good sense, cheekily using safety as their justification. They sell it to cities by emphasizing "revenue" rather more than safety. Very corrupt.
There's also the very serious problem that it inverts the principle of innocent until proven guilty. The car owners, who may not have been the drivers, are accused by an automated system notorious for making mistakes, and then have to go to a hearing to clear their names. Many choose to pay up instead, for reasons of practicality, even when they were innocent. The system is intentionally biased to generate offenses and favor guilty verdicts, for the money.
There are some law and order types inclined to believe red light camera propaganda, believe in the supposed irresponsibility of the average person and cynically overestimate the willingness to cheat of their fellow citizens. This law enforcement scheme played them like drum set.
Here's hoping Redflex dies. Good riddance.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05 2017, @05:50PM (2 children)
They need some strong mayors to come down hard on law and order with a "broken windows" policy. Red light runners are part of a spiralling wave of crime across the nation. We need to stamp it out RIGHT NOW before your daughters get raped by immigrants.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Sunday March 05 2017, @09:56PM (1 child)
While I do appreciate your jest, there has to be a middle-ground somewhere between the extreme lax enforcement of pretty dangerous behavior and the money-grab Reflex-style.
Automated cameras which catch you if you enter the intersection more than a second after red, with long yellows, would reduce injuries (and still pay for themselves in Chicago). Flashing people who don't fully stop for one second before turning right on red doesn't produce more safety than flashing them if they don't drop under 10 mph (which most sane people do).
And if you keep getting crashes at a given intersection, just fix the intersection with different lane configurations, lights timing, or a roundabout...
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday March 05 2017, @10:18PM
And if you keep getting crashes at a given intersection, just fix the intersection with different lane configurations, lights timing, or a roundabout...
Unfortunately, safety is only a buzzword used to justify a revenue grabbing scheme. Fixing bad intersections would be government actually accomplishing something.
I had a friend who received a ticket in the mail with two pictures, one showing her vehicle right at the stop line with a yellow light and another showing her vehicle a hundred feet or so past the intersection with a red light. Now maybe a ticket could have been legally justified if a policeman had witnessed that she had time to stop and did not (a yellow light is after all to warn one to clear an intersection, not just speed up to get through before the light turns red), but I cannot see how that determination could have been made based on those two photographs. Everyone urged her to fight that ticket, but I never did find out whether she did or not.