A quirk in Illinois traffic laws has complicated Mayor Rahm Emanuel's plan to pepper the city with speed cameras and slowed down bidding on a multimillion-dollar system scheduled to begin issuing $100 tickets by early next year.
The problem: a 38-year-old opinion by the Illinois attorney general that says children must be "visibly present" before school zone speed limits can be enforced.
What that means is those robotic safety-zone cameras must not only capture high-definition images of speeding cars and their license plates, they also must seek out and photograph a child as much as a football field's distance away — preferably in the same shot.
So either they're going to need multiple cameras or a giant pan-and-scan shot that gets some sort of panoramic view?
Well, since it's all for the children anyway....