Italian Red Lights Rigged With Short Yellow Light

suraj.sun writes with an excerpt from Ars Technica which brings to mind the importance of auditable code for hardware used in law enforcement: "It's no secret that red light cameras are often used to generate more ticket revenue for the cities that implement them, but a scam has been uncovered in Italy that has led to one arrest and 108 investigations over traffic systems being rigged to stop sooner for the sole purpose of ticketing more motorists."

Comments

Well here in Georgia

[Shivetya]

the lights near me which were changed to camera enforced had their yellow reduced the minimum allowed by the law.

The formula for this is pretty swift, http://safety.transportation.org/htmlguides/sgn_int/App02.htm

It is very common to see people lock down when it goes yellow so approaching either of the two I go through does require extra caution. The fortunate application is that they did concentrate on those crossings with the most amount of accidents from people running red lights. They have not applied them to intersections for leaving or entering an interstate where the rule seems to be five cars on red.

Re:Well here in Georgia

[Anonymous Coward]

It does.

This isn't news. Some cities in the US have been doing this for a while now, where the yellow light ends up going from 4 seconds to 2 seconds. I've seen seen one camera intersection have -no- yellow light. This means, you have to look at the walk/don't walk sign and stop at the light (while the light is green) if the don't walk part is flashing.

Most red light cameras are outsourced to private companies which get a cut of the red light violation revenue, so its pretty much matter of course to try to shorten the yellow light as much as possible.

Re:Well here in Georgia

[the eric conspiracy]

There are a number of studies out that show decreasing the yellow light period does in fact increase the number of rear end collisions.

Re:Well here in Georgia

[GigsVT]

http://www.motorists.org/photoenforce/home/guidelines-identifying-treating-locations-red-light-running-problem/

Far away from home

[Sigma 7]

At least we know that it doesn't happen in America. Except in about 6 cities or so.

Re:They should have an indicator of time left on

[chiui]

I've been in Germany, and they have a flashing green before the yellow, and something else I don't remember (but intuitive) when switching from red to green.
I can definitively say it saves time, gas and brakes.