Tennessee Town Releases Red Light Camera Stats

SonicSpike links to what he calls "a transparent look at some statistics released by a small town's red-light camera program," writing "Specifically, in the last fiscal quarter, 7,213 incidents were recorded, 2,673 incidents were rejected by the reviewing officer, and 662 incidents were not processed due to technical issues or lack of information. All in all 3,878 citations were issued between April 1 — June 30 in a town of 17,000 residents. Interestingly enough there are two nearby cities claiming that individuals 'have no presumption of innocence' when accused by the red light cameras." Fines for no-harm-no-foul rolling stops bug me, and remind me of Gary Lauder's suggestion to merge stop signs and yield signs.

Comments

Re:no-harm no-foul my a**

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

It can be much worse when you are a pedestrian, bicyclist or motorcyclist without a steel cage to protect you.
Funny thing the vehicle most likely to blast past stop signs without slowing are bicycles. I always stop rather than rolling, and get really pissed at bicyclists who seem to think they don't have to pay attention to traffic signs.

Re:no-harm no-foul

[schon]

That's a BS argument and has been refuted in the real world and has resulted in accidents at the intersection in question being reduced significantly.

Sorry, but your own quotes say that I am right.

I shall quote my own post:

A better idea is to keep the yellow the same duration, and install a countdown timer:

You say...

Increasing Yellow signal times is proven to work

When your citations say:

"the percentage of last-to-cross vehicles clearing the intersection (T+0.2) seconds or more past the yellow onset was not appreciably changed by the extension of the yellow phase."

And

Research has consistently shown that drivers do not, in fact, adapt to the length of the yellow.

So - if drivers don't adapt, how exactly is that "proven to work"?

I think your quotes show that it's your argument on this topic that could be classified as "BS", not mine.

Try reading the studies these cameras increase not decrease accidents, the accidents cost more to repair, are more likely to injure people involved, and perversely are more likely to result in a fatality.

As you're so good at providing citations, perhaps you could show me where exactly I (or the post I was replying to) said anything about red light cameras one way or the other. I didn't remember writing anything about it, and I just checked and couldn't spot it.

It's all about the money honey! These cameras are nothing but a dangerous revenue generating scheme.

Agreed. However, as my post wasn't about the cameras, perhaps we can play mutual masturbation another time?

Re:no-harm no-foul

[garyebickford]

IMHO 90% of red light runners do it on purpose. Just today I stretched a yellow light way too long - I think the light turned red as I went under it. Another car 100 feet back of me came through after me, at least two seconds after the light turned red. I could probably have stopped, and there's no question that the other guy could have. I had another similar incident a few weeks ago where four more cars came through after the light was certainly red. I live in Massachusetts these days and I'm convinced that this is a very popular habit here, much more than anywhere else I've lived.