Bluff City to start issuing warning citations to speeding motorists caught on camera

BLUFF CITY, Tenn. – A flashing light pole caught Kenny Hensley by surprise Monday as he drove up U.S. Highway 11E toward Bristol following an afternoon trip to Johnson City.

Attached to the light pole, about 200 yards from Pardner’s Bar-B-Que and Steak restaurant, is one of two speed cameras Bluff City police officers installed last month to watch drivers who travel the northbound and southbound lanes of U.S. 11E.

And every time its light flashed, Police Chief David Nelson said, the camera caught a vehicle exceeding the highway’s 45 mph speed limit and took its picture.

“If they’re not speeding, they don’t have anything to worry about,” Nelson said.

Starting today, registered owners of speeding vehicles will get a written warning. That grace period will last for one month.

Then beginning Jan. 1, police officers will start citing those caught speeding and they will be charged $90 per offense.

“I think it’s crazy,” said Hensley, one of several customers at Pardner’s for lunch Monday who said they are upset about the cameras.

Speeding has always been a problem on U.S. 11E, Nelson said, especially where the speed limit drops from 55 mph to 45 mph on a heavily traveled 3.8-mile stretch of the highway between Pardner’s and the Piney Flats crossroads.

The city asked Bristol Tennessee Traffic Engineer David Metzger to illustrate this problem by conducting a traffic study in January. Nelson said the study found that 9 percent of the 114,991 vehicles that passed through between Jan. 9 and Jan. 16 were traveling at least 55 mph, 143 vehicles were going 65 mph and another 12 were doing 75 mph or more. The average vehicle was traveling 47.9 mph, according to Metzger’s study.

With these figures in hand, Nelson pushed to install speed cameras, following the lead of police in Mount Carmel and Red Bank, Tenn.

The city’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted 4-1 in April to hire American Traffic Solutions to set up the speed cameras and signed a contract with the company in July.

Under the terms of this contract, Finance Director Judy Dulaney said, the city will charge speeders a $50 civil fine and a $40 administrative fee, which will go to ATS for installing the cameras and collecting the fines.

The board anticipated the cameras would bring in $50,000 of new revenue over the current fiscal year when it approved the city’s budget over the summer. But that number is now not certain because it was based on an assumption that the cameras would go live in August rather than January, Dulaney said.

But whatever amount of money the cameras bring in to city coffers, it will be enough to bother Ernie and Betty Noonkester, who referred to the speed cameras as a “money racket” while at Pardner’s for lunch Monday.

The couple travel 11E every day – he has a delivery route and she works as a nurse in Johnson City – and they’ve got different reasons for not liking the new cameras.

While they may catch speeders, Betsy Noonkester said, the cameras don’t do anything to catch people who drive without insurance, which she said is a bigger problem and more of a burden on taxpayers than speeding.

The cameras also aren’t fair, said Ernie Noonkester, who claims that if a city police officer wants to cite a person for speeding: “They should have to catch you.”

Nelson countered this claim by saying the city makes more money from speeding tickets when it puts a police officer on patrol than it will from a camera. Those caught speeding by officers have to pay $123.50 in fines and court costs, he said.

They’re also charged with a moving violation, the police chief said, which can have a negative impact on a driving record and insurance rates. Speed camera citations are non-moving violations and do not affect a person’s driving record.

Dulaney said speed camera citations can be appealed in traffic court the same way a normal speeding ticket is appealed. But, she said, the citation becomes a moving violation and affects a driving record, if the person is found guilty.

Nelson said the city also benefits from the cameras because they free up officers normally assigned to patrol 11E.

Jeff Huff, a Bristol, Tenn,, resident and Pardner’s patron Monday, cited this exact reason when he explained why he supports the new speed cameras.

“It’s a good idea,” Huff said, adding that he’s worried about the danger speeders cause for those entering and leaving businesses like Pardner’s.
“This is a pretty straight stretch that people can get going a good speed on,” he said.

gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518