Catching Red Light Runners: A New Challenge

For eight months, traffic cameras designed to catch motorists running red lights, were used in Minneapolis. Twenty-two thousand tickets were issued and the fines totaled three quarters of a million dollars.

But a court decision earlier this year forced city officials to turn off the cameras. Police are appealing the decision and feel confident they'll win.

In the meantime, they face another challenge, this one comes in the form of a spray can and costs just $30.

Sam Cooke is a Minnesota dealer of Photo-blocker, a reflective spray finish that's being marketed as a way to beat red light cameras.

"What it does is hyper-expose the picture," Cooke explains. "If there's no picture, there's no ticket. There is no $140 dollars coming out of your pocket. The photo comes out blurred and you've got every chance of escaping a hefty fine."

The makers of the spray have sold the product across the globe. In Minneapolis, Johnny Soxx bought a can. It's not illegal to purchase Photo-Blocker, but spraying it on your license plate is against the law.

"We were driving on the road and really were not paying attention. All of a sudden a red light (appeared) and we can't really stop," says Soxx. "The roads were slippery so we went through it and the strobe light went off."

" I'm not going to argue the fact whether the product works or not," comments Lt. Greg Reinhardt of the Minneapolis Police Department. "I mean, they make all sorts of claims ? but just putting this on your plate is illegal."

Not only is it illegal, it is hard to spot.

"Could you pick that out on the road?" asks Lt. Mark Peterson of the Minnesota State Patrol. "It would be hard. I can look at it close and it looks like you changed the reflectivity, but it would be hard for us to see this."

Whether police could detect the spray may be up for debate, but what law enforcement is certain about, is that running red lights is a gamble that's not worth taking.

"You're risking for your life," says Reinhardt. "Is your life worth thirty dollars?"

"I think we have to take traffic safety a little more serious than that. We're still down to the number one killer of young adults in Minnesota," adds Peterson.

Denver police tested the spray. On that day, three years ago, the license plate was obscured. They say since then, better cameras have been installed and they doubt they'd get the same results today.

Minneapolis police wouldn't test the product, citing safety concerns. So, we tested the product, albeit under somewhat different conditions. We used a digital camera.

We shot the plate from three different angles outside during the day. We used available light and did not use a flash on the camera. Not once, was it ever obscured.

And at the University of Minnesota, a physics professor said there's no reason why the plate would appear unreadable.

"This isn't going to work because the ambient light, the ordinary daylight, is not going to produce glare and your plate is not going to be obscured," commented Marvin Marshak, of the U of M physics department.

But if you read the print on the can, the makers concede, it takes a flash for it to work.

So, to best simulate a camera mounted on a pole along the side of a street, we had KARE photographer Brett Akagi take flash pictures from a ladder. While many times you could still make out the plate once, there was still confusion.

"They'll be able to zoom in so I can still see it," Akagi says. "It's bright."

"Can you see the whole license plate though," reporter Bernie Grace asks?

"Read it, read it, ckj-095 or cxj-095," reads Akagi. "Okay, close."

When the photos were loaded into a computer, in almost all cases, the plate could be read. That was especially true if all photos were taken without a flash.

The exception was a couple of pictures that were taken at night with a flash. In those instances, the plate was unreadable. The picture was over-exposed and the plate was blurred.

So under just the right conditions, this spray may obscure your license plate. But if offers no guarantees, especially if the camera flash doesn't go off.

So spray or no spray, the bottom line is if you're running red lights, be prepared for a ticket.

By Bernie Grace, KARE 11 News

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