Oak Brook's police chief wants the red light cameras at a busy intersection removed, saying they cause crashes.
A study completed by the village of Oak Brook suggests cameras at the intersection of Route 83 and 22nd Street in Oakbrook Terrace have caused an increased number of crashes, according to Oak Brook Police Chief James Kruger.
Kruger said the crashes are due to drivers "panic stopping" to avoid getting a ticket. Oak Brook's village president sent a letter to the Illinois Department of Transportation in January, demanding that the permit to run the cameras, which were installed in August 2017, be revoked.
According to the study, the number of crashes reported at the intersection jumped from 23 in 2015 to 36 in 2017. There were 36 crashes in 2018, and 49 in 2019.
Before the cameras were installed, police had predicted the cameras would cause crashes, but there was no data to prove it. Now they have the data, according to Kruger.
"There was no way to prove that until we had the data to be able to show them," Kruger said. "And unfortunately over these last four years, the data has proved that the assumptions we made four, five years ago are holding true."
A future community meeting will be held for the village to look over the data before presenting it to IDOT, asking for the cameras to be removed.
