Chandler Refuses to Stand Behind Bogus Study

Redflex is caught red-handed again. Not only is their name all over the recent “study” released by the Insurance Institute of Higher Safety (IIHS), but as always, the numbers don’t add up.

TheNewspaper.com has a thorough two part debunking.

Part I

Part II

This time the national and local media both get an overall failing grade on actually investigating the study released yesterday, before reporting on it.

The City of Chandler was contacted by two of the news outlets (both local) who reported on the news release by Redflex. Both were told that Chandler was not consulted and the numbers given by IIHS were inaccurate and deceptive.

As a matter of fact, quoting city officials, none of the Chandler intersection used in the IIHS study actually have photo enforcement scameras. How could a study on the impact of ANYTHING be done in this manner? Honestly, this sounds like a bad joke but it’s unfortunately the new low that Redflex has reached.

Since the news media absolutely failed miserably to report on that major omission, they all deserve to be graded on what little work was done to verify the facts.

Let’s break it all down, source by source.

NBC’s The Today Show – They unexpectedly canceled coverage of the IIHS “study” in a wise move. They were going to allow Frank Antenori, who introduced SB1352, Arizona’s Photo Radar Prohibition Bill, to speak on the INCREASED crashes all over scamera covered roads and intersections in Arizona during the last few years. We can only assume that they actually used fact checkers and saw that IIHS’s numbers were fundamentally flawed.Grade – Incomplete

ABC’s Good Morning America – Ran the story as fact without any type of investigation, allowing for a brief rebuttal by the National Motorists Association. Grade – F

Phoenix NBC affiliate KPNX (Channel 12)- Reached CameraFRAUD for comment, but only after reporting on the issue. They initially informed us that someone at Channel 12 had contacted the City of Chandler and was told that the numbers were inaccurate and the IIHS/Redflex study never included any input from the city. KPNX made no mention that Chandler gave the study a thumbs down. Grade – D

Phoenix ABC affiliate KNXV (Channel 15) – Gave CameraFRAUD the best chance to comment, although they also ran with the story in the morning. ABC 15 was given the same response by the City of Chandler about the bogus numbers. Grade – C

It’s pretty obvious that the release of this study was timed out to counter the legislation to ban photo ticketing. We know from results at the ballot box that photo ticketing is heavily rejected by the public, so let’s all make doubly sure our legislators know how we feel as the debate over SB1352 draws very near.