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While driving through the Golden Triangle, travelers may notice that there are no red light cameras tracking speeding or vehicles entering an intersection after the light has turned red.

While there are other surveillance cameras used by local law enforcement, red light cameras are not used for monitoring speeding or issuing tickets.

Why do none of the cities or counties have red light cameras? How are traffic laws enforced without cameras? What are future plans for additional traffic enforcement in the Golden Triangle?

Why does the Golden Triangle not have red light cameras?

Mississippi law outlines that “neither the board of supervisors of any county nor the governing authority of any municipality” shall have any cameras used to “enforce compliance with traffic signals, traffic speeds or other traffic laws.”

According to the Governor’s Highway Safety Association, Mississippi is one of nine states that have banned the use of red light cameras. The other eight are Texas, Maine, Montana, South Carolina, New Hampshire, South Dakota, West Virginia and Idaho.

While red light cameras are outlawed, other cameras for surveillance on public roads are allowed as long as they are not used by law enforcement to automatically issue tickets for traffic infractions or instances of speeding.

How are red lights enforced without cameras?

Columbus Police Assistant Chief Terence Ware, Lowndes County Sheriff Eddie Hawkins and West Point Police Chief Michael Edwards said their departments currently enforce traffic laws while on regular patrols.

“Basically, the patrol officers, if they see an infraction, they will pull that person over for whatever infraction it is,” Ware said. “Whether it’s running a stop sign, red light, speeding, what have you.”

Edwards and Ware agreed they feel that their departments do a good job patrolling and enforcing infractions when they see them, but they know some fall through the cracks without cameras at each intersection.

“It’s a no-brainer. If you can monitor (intersections) physically and you can monitor electronically, you’re gonna catch a lot more (infractions) versus one or the other,” Edwards said. “We are missing some, but we’re missing a lot of things … (since) we don’t have the capability to enhance or capture things on a daily manner.”

Ware said red light cameras do have “pros and cons” when it comes to their assistance for law enforcement.

Without a way to accurately identify who is driving the vehicle on footage, Ware said typically tickets are sent to the owner of the vehicle rather than to the person who performed the infraction.

“I’m not opposed to red light cameras, but I think they cause kind of a problem because the ticket goes to the owner of the car,” Ware said. “… But the problem would be who’s driving the car? Is the owner of that car driving? Say, for instance, you get a ticket in the mail. You get a ticket from one of those red light cameras, and you’re not driving, but you’re the owner of that car … so you get that ticket.”

Hawkins said that with fewer red lights in the county compared to the city, he believes red light cameras would not benefit his department’s traffic enforcement.

Hawkins said those issues make him believe that Mississippi residents do not have the “appetite” to add cameras throughout the state should the law be repealed.

“I think what they do, they use it as a revenue generator to send people tickets and hoping that … maybe they got a guilty conscience and they’ll pay the ticket,” Hawkins said. “… I just don’t think that it would be a good thing.”