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

Technically it shouldn't...

[DrYak]

reducing the yellow will probably make the intersection more dangerous.

From a theoretical point of view, it shouldn't make the intersection more dangerous, it should just increase the ticket revenue.

According to traffic laws across lots of countries, a yellow light doesn't "push the accelerator and try to make it through as fast as possible".
A yellow light means, "try stopping if you can, because the light will turn red soon - if you can't stop, only then you should cross" - with a yellow light you're supposed to stop anyway (just like with a red one) if you still have enough braking distance to stop.

If a driver sees a yellow light from far away, no matter how short the duration of this light, still has enough time and braking distance to come to a stop before crossing.

If a driver sees a yellow light really near, right before crossing, that means that the drivers hasn't the necessary braking distance to stop before crossing. Therefore the driver should be allowed to cross.
A normal traffic light stays yellow long enough to let the driver reach the other side of the crossing.
A yellow light shortened way too much means that the driver can't escape the ticket : the light turned yellow too late, at a moment when the car can't be stoped before crossing and is forced to continue. But as the light turns red too fast, the car still hasn't reached the other side of the crossing and can be ticketed by the camera.

The other traffic light won't turn green simultaneously (there's always some safety margin). Thus no car will come crash sideways against the tricked driver.

So in theory, there's no additional risk of collision, only the risk that the driver won't be able to make through the crossing before the red light in case the driver couldn't brake in time.

But, yes, in practice, lots of drivers will probably slam their accelerator even harder, and this increase in speed will probably bring more accidents.

Re:Technically it shouldn't...

[uncqual]

I think the problem is that people try to stop more quickly than is prudent in fear of getting nailed by the camera and the result is an increase in rear end collisions from tailgaters behind them or skidding out of control into other cars/objects.

Although, of course, one should not tailgate the car in front of them, they have no control over the car behind them. At times when someone is tailgating me in heavy traffic, I've made a decision to not stop at a yellow light that I could have stopped at. The reason being, I felt that given normal signal timing, if I didn't stop, I would still enter the intersection on the yellow but if I did stop, I would get rear ended. I placed my obligation to avoid an accident higher than the slight risk of a "fast yellow" set to the theoretically shortest possible timing and confident that if a cop happened to be watching, he might nail the guy behind me instead of me (as, the second guy entering on a red is somehow "more guilty" IMHO). If I know there's a red light camera at the intersection, sorry, I assume that the yellow is as short as possible and I stop even if it increases the risk of being rear ended (his insurance company pays for my car repairs, he doesn't pay for the red light ticket). In fact, I had a couple of close calls (guy behind me smoking squealing tires, skidding etc. while I stopped safely behind the limit line without fanfare) at a local intersection that I drive through regularly -- and was annoyed when I read in the paper much later that the cameras had been turned off at that intersection for over a year!

When someone is tailgating you in heavy traffic, you have few options to stopping that behavior quickly - changing lanes isn't always an option, slowing down may just make the problem worse if you're approaching a signal which may turn yellow suddenly since the distance between yourself and the following car - i.e. the margin of safety - is reduced (because the gap is shorter and you're going slower so actually stop more quickly) if the tailgater doesn't take heed of your speed change before you decide to stop for a yellow.

Even with all this care, twice I've been rear ended by a tailgater when I stopped quickly - once for a yellow light, another time for another reason. One of these times, three cars behind me ended up hitting each other also. The car behind me was lighter, more fragile, and had a lower bumper than my car (his was a small Fiat I think) so his impact on my bumper just scuffed the underside of my bumper cover but his bumper, grill, lights, and hood were seriously trashed. (After determining I had no damage I cared about, the officer noted that there was only room for three cars on the standard accident report he had to fill out so, unless I needed the report for my uses, he would just leave me off and I could go on my way -- I always wondered how the guy behind me explained to his insurance company how his car had thousands of dollars of damage and the car he hit didn't even exist on the accident report).

Stopping "as quickly as you can" is just a bad idea unless it's necessary and safe.

Re:News Flash!

[lysergic.acid]

ok, you got me there. =P

actually, i stayed in Melrose Park, a western suburb of Chicago, one summer with a tattoo artist friend of mine. it was a predominantly Italian town that, as i understand, was run by (or at the very least had close ties to) the mob. needless to say, the local police were a bit corrupt. the cops also didn't seem to mind that we were smoking pot or doing lines of coke in front of them since my friend and his family were well known in the community.

coincidentally, a few weeks before i left their entire police department was raided by SWAT teams and the FBI. apparently the police chief had been busted for--supposedly--embezzling over a hundred million dollars (how he did that as a police chief of a small suburb i have no clue). but still, that did make the news and wasn't something that happened everyday.

Some Red Light Cameras Ticket Legal Turns, Too

[Holistic Missile]

Here in the Chicago suburbs, a red-light camera made the news recently. It is at the entrance to a large and very busy mall. In its first month of operation, over 7000 tickets were mailed out. Many of the tickets were people legally turning right on red. These people shouldn't worry, though. Here in the USA we have the right to face our accuser...oh, never mind.

In my town, they claim that the camera tickets do not count against the point system on our licenses; I don't know if that is statewide, a local ordinance, or just false. The village officials were saying anything to try and quiet the public outcry when the cameras started appearing about 6 months ago. Funny how the ticket sticks as far as paying a fine, but the rest of the official law doesn't apply. It really is all about the revenue.

As a person who detests the abuse of the laws like this, it really bothers me. As a driver, it doesn't matter as much to me - I am not one of the yellow-light hotshots. Driving fast on open roads is more my thing.