Stoplights to Mete Out Punishment?

gilrain writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that traffic engineers have created a stoplight that deals with speeding. According to the article, 'It senses when a speeder is approaching and metes out swift punishment. It doesn't write a ticket. It immediately turns from green to yellow to red.' This is not just a prototype: it is in use now at an intersection in the Bay Area. Does stopping speeders before others serve a purpose other than petty revenge? Is it even safe to change expected stoplight patterns, especially for drivers in a hurry?"

Comments

Old Tech

[BillFarber]

In the town where I grew up about 20 years ago, there was a light that did that. It was on a 25 MPH road, and if you were going faster than 28 or so, it would turn red. We would go out of our way to avoid that light.

what about other drivers?

[Frizzle Fry]

It would certainly piss me off if some guy was speeding ahead of me and caused the light ahead of us to turn red, stopping both of us. People on the road get mad at other drivers too often already; do we really need to give people another excuse to get mad at someone, blaming "that idiot speeder" for making them late?

Re:what about other drivers?

[bladernr]

It would certainly piss me off if some guy was speeding ahead of me and caused the light ahead of us to turn red, stopping both of us.

But isn't peer pressure a good motivator? Now, speeding will not only get you more redlights (making it, in fact, take longer to get anywhere the faster you go), but you also run the risk of being the jackass that stopped all traffic.

Seems to me that this solves the speeding problem in a way that doesn't involve fines, which have had almost no effect.

Re:what about other drivers?

[Ralph Wiggam]

You're missing an important thing about peer pressure. You have to care what your peers think for it to work. In heavy traffic in a large city, people do obnoxious shit all the time. They do it because nobody they'll ever speak to will see it.

I heard a related funny story a few weeks ago. The police have these trailer units that detect speed and usually just show the number to make people aware of how fast they're going. The new ones check if you're speeding and take a picture of the back of the car as it passes and the owner of that license plate is issued a ticket (they do the same thing with stoplight mounted systems, but these are mobile for smaller towns). Someone with huge brass ones stole the license plate off of the back of the trailer. They put the plate on their own car and drove in front of the trailer a dozen times at 100 MPH. The next week a dozen reckless driving tickets were delivered to the police department. I hope it's true.

All this stuff is just another step towards our 24 hour survailance. "If you're not a criminal, then you won't have anything to hide."

-B

Re:Timing it right could be tricky

[Rinikusu]

I'll go along with this ONLY if a spotlight also illuminates the offending car and it becomes legal to exit your own vehicle and pummel the offending driver for fucking up traffic for the rest of us.

Isn't this supposed to be covered by, I dunno, speeding tickets and cops? If speeding tickets aren't the proper deterrent, maybe we should stiffen the penalties if we wish to reduce speeding. Or maybe we should raise the speed limits.

California

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC in california they already let cars run red lights if they are turning right, under the "pedestrian culling" program.

Re:Another solution looking for a problem

[Dr Rick]

"As far as speeding tickets goes, it is a doucmented fact that traffic laws are not for safety but revenue generation"

And the documentation you mention would be...

Re:Timing it right could be tricky

[the_2nd_coming]

it is a behavioral punishment.

if you always get a negative reinforcement for an action, operant conditioning will cause the drivers to slow down. tickets and cops are not regular enough to train people to stop.

Re:Stoplights say a lot about the people

[Debillitatus]

More evidence that Europeans are a more civilized in their driving?

Are you insane? You ever been to Rome?

Re:Timing it right could be tricky

[tsg]

They think that this will save more accidents and lives by slowing everyone down.

Except that:

The punitive nature of the signal on Vineyard appears to have the united support of neighbors and the Police Department, which hasn't seen an unusual number of accidents on the route but envisions a low-cost way to make people feel safe.

In other words, it's fixing a problem that doesn't exist and is only meant to make people feel better.

All over the place over here

[greppling]

Where I live (Germany), we have plenty of such traffic lights. Contrary to the sensationalist /. reply, this hasn't caused any accident or has made people start running the red lights by habit. To the contrary, they work well.

An effctive alternative is a traffic light that is red and turn green a fixed amount of time after an approaching car has come to a certain distance. Those who were going too fast have to stop, others can drive on smoothly.

Re:Aww, unfair to speeders!

[Mattintosh]

Traffic laws are meant to be broken. Want proof? Look at how many times local law enforcement gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar, changing speed limits, moving stop signs, and in general, making traffic laws become a big fat cash cow instead of a safety precaution.

Want a real safety precaution? Scare people straight. Make all the roads' speed limits something like the "safe and prudent" stuff they use in remote rural areas. Then, impose a severe penalty for unsafe driving. If you cause an accident, you lose your license for a year. Cause another one, make it 5 years. Drive without a license? No license ever again, and 1 year in prison. Drunk driving? Go for it, but stay in your lane and don't wreck. Kill someone, and you get a minimum of 3rd-degree murder. I'd guess that'd be about 30-50 years in prison.

Basically, drive at your own risk, 'cause the government is done babysitting your cellphone-talking, makeup-applying, shaving, radio-retuning, newspaper-reading, kid-slapping, drowsy, drunk, high, and/or just-plain-stupid ass. You are responsible for your own actions, whether you like it or not.

Of course, this is America, land of the free, home of the brave, abode of the irresponsible. It'll never happen.

Speed is boring, but acceleration is fun

[mudder]

I drive a fairly fast car, and the truth is, driving it at high speed isn't that much fun. Going 100 on the freeway really doesn't feel that much different from going 65 (apart from being really nervous about the impending ticket). However, acceleration is a totally different story. I really enjoy being at the front of the line at a stop light. When the light goes green, I accelerate as quickly as possible until I hit 5 - 10 mph over the limit. I then let off the gas and back down to whatever the speed limit is. I've been known to stop for yellow lights when I could legally continue, just to get that feeling from stomping on the accelerator.

So, a light like this is a dream come true for me. If I approach the light just a bit over the speed limit, I'm gauranteed to get an opportunity to race away when the light goes green. Yay!

Re:Timing it right could be tricky

[trentblase]

Unfortunately, there have been studies that show that drivers will drive at what they consider a safe speed regardless of the speed limit. Tickets are less of a deterrent and more of a revenue source for underfunded municipalities. Check out http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html (although you always have to consider the source in any study).

Re:Timing it right could be tricky

[Glonoinha]

That is exactly why I envision this working. It is Pavlovian-esque, subliminal, always present, and there is a direct link between action and consequence.

Normally when you speed nothing bad happens. You don't generally get stopped, you don't generally get a ticket. With a single punishment for every 300 times you do something, there is a disconnect.

With the light trick it happens every time. By trying to go faster you are forced to wait out the light so you get where you are going later than you would have had you driven the speed limit. Every time. Which sucks. So you learn. Fast.

People slow down in town without those pesky (and expensive) tickets, cops are free to go do real police work catching bad guys, damn - I think this is brilliant. Sure beats getting a $100 photo-radar ticket in the mail.

Re:Timing it right could be tricky

[TheCarp]

but can we define speeding?

While speed limits make sense in many situations, they don't always.

There are plenty of places that I can point to where speed limits are entirely too low. That is to say it is perfectly safe given normal driving conditions (no fog, dry or even slightly wet roads) to go 15-20 MPH over the posted speed limit.

This is both in town and out. In fact, I can say from my own experience, as someone who regularly "speeds" that about 95% of the time that I have had a close call with a pedestrian or another car it has not involved speed, but rather has involved crowded intersections where traffic is moving well below posted speed limits where it is needed for the driver to track moving objects in several places.
(Cars in 2 other lanes of trafic, and pedestrians walkin gou tinto the street with abandon etc)

The simple fact is that speed limits are usually sweeping "30 in the city" which are really only needed in certain places within the city. Most wide city roads are no more dangerous at 45 than they are at 30, except when traffic is too heavy to do 45 anyway, in which case it self limits to safe speeds anyway.

All in all I agree this is a fine solution to real speeding... but generally speaking I think that speed limits are set too low for normal conditions and I shudder to think what decreasing the speeds people drive in such a hevay handed and sweeping way will do to traffic around here during the time periods at the ends of rush hour where speeds are starting to naturally pick back up.

-Steve

Re:Aww, unfair to speeders!

[American AC in Paris]

Traffic laws are meant to be broken. Want proof? Look at how many times local law enforcement gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar, changing speed limits, moving stop signs, and in general, making traffic laws become a big fat cash cow instead of a safety precaution.

Then be a renegade! Buck the system! Fight The Man! Follow every single traffic law. That'll really stick it to em!

Won't their faces be red when they see an army of cars observing posted speed limits and following traffic laws! I can just see them now, huddled in their secret subterrainean command center, cursing and waving their fists as car after car proceeds down the street in an orderly, safe, courteous manner!

Take that, federal, state and local government! Muah-ha-hah!

Re:Timing it right could be tricky

[Adriax]

Normally when you speed nothing bad happens. You don't generally get stopped, you don't generally get a ticket. With a single punishment for every 300 times you do something, there is a disconnect.

I hit a deer at 75 on the interstate once, now I generally drive around 5mph slower than the speed limit.

See, life threatening situations can cause a drop in average speed a lot better than tickets ever will, so maybe they should setup a system that releases deer when it detects an oncomming speeding car.