Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Hacking Italian traffic lights for financial gain has been thought of before. The Italian Job
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
At least we know that it doesn't happen in America. Except in about 6 cities or so.
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.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
um, are you implying that this isn't news because all traffic signals are rigged with short yellow lights?
assuming that this is a common practice, the fact that those responsible for rigging the traffic lights are being prosecuted is still newsworthy. it's not everyday that 63 municipal police, 39 municipal government officials, and 7 government contractors are accused of conspiracy and corruption.
if nothing, this case has brought international media attention to a potentially widespread problem--and not just with rigged lights but all traffic camera systems. if journalists don't report on such stories, then the issue would probably be ignored rather than bringing traffic cameras under public scrutiny.
and if you know that your hometown has rigged traffic cameras, then maybe you should report the problem to the proper authorities or file a lawsuit against the city. acting as if government corruption should just be accepted (or ignored) is precisely the kind of public complacency that allows corrupt officials to remain in power.
If you don't have time to create sufficient separation when approaching an intersection then just assume it's red and start to stop until you can verify that the light is actually green.
Unfortunately there are cars behind you, and if their drivers can see the [green] light (because they are farther and their view is not obstructed) they'd have no reason to think that you will be slowing down, and so they might slam right into you.
it's not everyday that 63 municipal police, 39 municipal government officials, and 7 government contractors are accused of conspiracy and corruption.
I guess you've never heard of Chicago.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
traffic lights. Whether that means to have a big single-digit countdown clock (for last 10 seconds, usuable for any color light) or simply start blinking at a faster and faster rate last 10 seconds right before it changes (again, any color light).
It would also help with conserving gas, so from farther away you can adjust your speed by being given info on what that light will be 300ft down the road.
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.
As somebody who has lived in a suburb just a bit south of Chicago his entire life, I can say this is entirely false.
...we usually don't bother to accuse anybody of their wrongdoing.
I guess you've never heard of Chicago.
I heard Chicago was founded when a bunch of New Yorkers got together and said, "Gee, I'm really loving all of the crime and the traffic, but it's just not cold enough."
DATABASE WOW WOW
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.
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It only affects the people around you. Same thing when you're stupid.
We are talking about Italy, where the more corrupt you are, the more likely you are to end up in the national government. As an Italian, however, I am positive that no politician will be held accountable for this: our legal system effectively prevents corruption from being prosecuted.
How is that? Well, corruption is still a crime, and politicians have not yet managed to make investigations discretionary—any report on illegal activities still must be investigated, no matter the opinion of the prosecutors; this is a good thing because the politicians cannot tell prosecutors what to do. However, at the same time, Italy is unique in that we have a system with three degrees of appeal that are almost always granted, and statutory terms that continue running during the trial.
So, what do criminal politicians do? They remove all the funding they can from the judiciary. Italy's judiciary system is in a condition in which they actually lack paper and toner for printers, not to mention judiciary police being short on petrol. Add in a lot of legislation designed to slow down trials on crimes likely to be committed by politicians, note that complete trials may take a decade while statutory terms are much shorter, and and you can be sure that no person with enough money in their pockets to pay for lawyers will ever land in jail, unless they did something particularly heavy and/or lost support among their caste.
Our prime minister has used this trick a few times already, some of which after having changed the law in order to shorten statutory terms.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y