So...Not for the Children?

Seems that the media has finally figured out what their job was a number of years later:

• Until a couple of years ago, neighbors say few people even knew about tiny Challenger Playlot Park, nestled under the thunder of the CTA Red Line tracks on the city's North Side.
  
  That's because the gravel dog walk surrounded by a chain-link fence isn't really what many would consider a park. It has no playground equipment. No picnic table.
  
  But the park has become notorious for the one thing it does have — a nearby speed camera that has quickly racked up more than $2 million in tickets. Residents describe the camera, which went live in December 2013, as a poster child for what's wrong with Mayor Rahm Emanuel's "Children's Safety Zone" program.
  
  "This is where they are saving children? This is a place to walk your dog," said homeowner Alissa Friedman, who received two tickets from the camera. "No one's in danger. No one is even remotely in danger."

This particular camera has been mentioned here dozens of times and in other publications. It's emblematic of the money-drive behind the camera program, not any sort of "safety." In fact, the most dangerous intersections or stretches of surface street don't seem to have any cameras at all:

• The 25 cameras that generate the most tickets in the city are all park cameras, and all are placed on well-traveled major streets where crash data show child pedestrians are least likely to be struck by speeders.

Imagine that - it isn't for the children at all:

• An examination of crash data shows that no children have been hit by speeding cars along the stretch of Irving Park Road near Challenger Park since at least 2004, even though some have been injured on the residential interior streets nearby.

In fact, we've heard that all of the most dangerous stretches of road have not even a single camera. Children (and pedestrians) get hit mostly on interior streets where their guard is down and drivers are coming off a busy street. You get the occasional Lake Shore Drive fatality, but there isn't supposed to be foot traffic there anyway.

Just so we're clear, the cameras are a money grab, and if the media had done their job when this crap started, mapping out where cameras got placed, where the casualties piled up, where the accidents were (you know, like investigative reporting used to be), instead of just re-posting Shortshanks and Emanuel press releases, then they would have fulfilled their purpose of keeping the electorate informed and politicians semi-accountable.