Boston Mayor Tom Menino has said he wants to install cameras at key intersections to nab the city’s notoriously heavy-footed drivers who think a yellow light is their cue to speed up. “A thousand Americans were killed in 2003 because people chose to run a red light,” Menino’s transportation commissioner, Tom Tinlin, told the Boston Globe last December. “The scope of this project is very specific. It’s to tell people to stop running red lights. That’s the only intent.”

Maybe so. But reports from other cities suggest the added eyes on drivers and resulting traffic offense fines can also be a cash cow for strapped municipal budgets. This is a bonus that surely won’t be turned down by Menino, who often complains about the city’s limited means of raising revenue. Today’s Houston Chronicle reports that cameras installed last fall at 50 intersections there have so far brought in $6 million. Meanwhile, the Miami Herald reports that city commissioners there gave initial approval yesterday to a plan for intersection cameras, a move that supporters say could generate as much $10 million in annual revenue for the city.

The Herald reports that a 2005 Federal Highway Administration study found a decrease in “T-bone-type” accidents at intersections with cameras, but an increase in rear-end collisions. The paper says the increase in rear-enders is presumably a result of drivers becoming skittish about the cameras and stopping quickly when drivers behind them aren’t expecting it, something that could be a particular problem under Boston’s yellow-light-means-go-like-hell rules of the road.