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Red Light Cameras Raise Crash Risk, Cost
concealment writes with news of dissatisfaction with a pilot program for stoplight-monitoring cameras. The program ran for several years in New Jersey, and according to a new report, the number of car crashes actually increased while the cameras were present.
"[The program] appears to be changing drivers’ behavior, state officials said Monday, noting an overall decline in traffic citations and right-angle crashes. The Department of Transportation also said, however, that rear-end crashes have risen by 20 percent and total crashes are up by 0.9 percent at intersections where cameras have operated for at least a year. The agency recommended the program stay in place, calling for 'continued data collection and monitoring' of camera-monitored intersections. The department’s report drew immediate criticism from Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon, R-Monmouth, who wants the cameras removed. He called the program 'a dismal failure,' saying DOT statistics show the net costs of accidents had climbed by more than $1 million at intersections with cameras."
Other cities are considering dumping the monitoring tech as well, citing similar cost and efficacy issues.
Just have homeless/unemployed people at the intersections with digital cameras?
Hard to tell without access to the raw figures, but if the number of T-bone crashes has reduced, replaced by more rear-end incidents, is it possible that the injury rate, or at least number of serous injuries or fatalities, has decreased? Even if the net cost in car damage increases, that would still be a win in my books.
i work on the west side of manhattan a few days a week and the NJ drivers are some of the worst ones
along with the asian truck drivers any car with NJ plates would rather run you over or cut you off instead of letting you cross the street on your green light
Maybe the accidents are just reported more often, now that the chance of hit and run diminishes as the cameras capture license plate numbers. Most small hit and run fender benders probably go unreported.
...who didn't see that happening? When you can't face your accuser anymore, someone who can see you had no ability to stop for the red light - people will just jam on the brakes, be damned the people behind them at the time. Sometimes, just going through the red light is the -least- dangerous option presented - something a red light camera doesn't distinguish.
There have been a number of scandals, including in New Jersey, where installation of cameras was found to coincide with, or be followed shortly thereafter by, shortening the yellow-light duration, presumably to make more money from the resulting tickets.
This article implies that the cameras themselves are at fault, but I wonder if the shortened yellow-light duration is actually the primary culprit.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
In this case, it was the low revenue (low three-digit range after five years of handing out fines) that forced the decision. With red light cameras, the private contractor is the real winner. Everyone else, from local citizen to local government only loses.
http://www.pe.com/local-news/san-bernardino-county/san-bernardino-county-headlines-index/20101205-loma-linda-red-light-cameras-switched-off.ece
1. Long yellow lights -- minimum of 5 seconds, and more at high speeds -- so that people don't have to slam on the brakes.
2. No visible flashes to distract or blind drivers.
3. No "red light photo enforced" signs to make drivers act strangely.
I bet this will eliminate the extra crashes. It will also eliminate some of the ticket revenue, but I'm sure you can make up for that by increasing the fines on the idiots who will still violate the red light even though they now have plenty of warning to stop.
Works fine in Belgium, where there's hundreds of cameras and we see a steady decrease in the number of casualties at those lights. But maybe that's because there are so many, people actually start slowing down well in advance and don't hit the brakes as soon as they see a camera...
If I'm rear-ended at an intersection that has a camera, can I sue the city because the presence of the red light camera (and the shortening of the yellow cycle associated with them) has been proven to cause such accidents? And also due to them not EVER enforcing "following-too-closely" ordinances, people following you too closely is pretty much a given. This is true of every city I've ever driven in, so it's an easy argument to make.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Maybe people should actually obey the Orange light (which at least in my country is 'Stop if able to') rather than treating it like the best time to put the foot on the gas.. Maybe once people do that they won't be screeching to a halt causing rear ends because they didn't intend to stop until the noticed the camera watching. Poor driving behavior is probably the primary cause of the increase, the cameras just force the issue to surface.
But how has this affected the severity of collisions at red lights? If the rate of accidents goes up, but the rate of injuries goes down, I'd call that a win.
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
That you can legislate all you like, but that will never account or prevent everything. When these systems first went in I immediately wondered if they would see what they have seen. A rise in "other" types of accidents like people slamming on breaks to avoid a red light camera. Seriously, if people paid more attention and were more courteous these things would happen less regardless.
...regarding ...
* 1. exploitation of homeless/unemployed people and putting them in harm's way ?
* 2. drivers getting into accident due to the distraction by the appearance of homeless/unemployed/unkempt people at busy traffic intersections?
* 3. little girls in cars got spooked by homeless/unemployed/unkempt people taking pictures of them?
If your answer is "YES" to all of the above questions, then, sure, go ahead, start distributing digital cameras to homeless/unemployed people and putting them in the middle of busy traffic intersections.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
C'mon Slashdot, I saw this "news" more than a few months ago.
I guess our previous discussion wasn't very productive.
It is just a matter of time before someone is going to sue the traffic camera company. Especially when reports like this come out. So what kind of liability waivers these companies are getting from the cities? We already know the city officials are a bunch of chimps who get just peanuts while bulk of the collection goes to the traffic camera company. They are not known for their skill in negotiating with these companies. It is very much possible these companies have full immunity and all the liability will fall on the city and its tax payers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Look, if savings go up by 2 million dollars and costs go up by 3 million dollars (of which 1 million dollars goes into my pocket), then operating at a 1 million dollar loss is a net good.
It was raining and I was driving in an unfamiliar city that I'd heard had some new red-light cameras. The light turned yellow at just that time when you know you can make it through if you give just a bit more gas. If I'd done that, everything would have been just fine EXCEPT, I might have technically run the red light. Since I didn't want to possibly get a ticket, I hit the brakes and the guy behind me hit me.
Roundabouts.
They also improve traffic flow and eliminate the need for 4-lanes in each direction to store stopped idling cars.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
That isn't surprising. The Federal Highway Administration found that red-light cameras increase rear-end collisions but reduce more severe right-angle collisions, saving $50,000 in collisions per intersection per year in medical and repair costs.
That would be an extremely bad idea. "In the immediately aftermath of the [red light camera] law's expiration, the risk of someone running a red light at an intersection was three times higher than it had been when cameras were on."
If safety is the goal, they should keep the red light cameras and lengthen the yellow light duration. "An Institute study conducted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, evaluated effects on red light running of first lengthening yellow signal timing by about a second and then introducing red light cameras. While the longer yellow reduced red light violations by 36 percent, adding camera enforcement further cut red light running by another 96 percent."
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Don't drive like a dick. Problem solved.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
The real question is whether the cameras are preventing injuries or death from side on collisions. Do people that run the red light plow into the people that have the green light? Are the people that have the green light getting injured or killed more often since they are getting hit on the side of the car where the crumple zone is minimal? The data needs a full review and not cherry picking to promote a particular argument.
The truth is that people should not run red lights and they should prepare to stop on yellow lights. The person behind them should also be preparing to stop to avoid running the red light or rear-ending the car in front of them. This is just good driving practice and the rules of the road. I find it strange that people try to rationalize a particular harmful point of view by what appears to be cherry picking of the data.
It seems highly possible less people are running red-lights and are breaking recklessly instead.
So the real problem is people approaching the intersection too quickly. Before cameras, they just went right through, causing right-angle collisions. Now they scared of the fine and breaking quickly, causing read-end collisions.
The real solution is not to approach intersections at a dangerous speed. Keeping a safe distance from the car in front. Paying attention to the road.
It is poor driving skills that leads to running red lights as well as poor driving skills that leads to the rear end collisions. Not to mention the mass of accidents caused due to people being just far to fucking ignorant to abide safe following distances. But I think you got it with the assessment that the cameras just make it obvious, not cause it.
Either way, people are driving unsafely and violating the law. Stop for the red light, and morons who are tailgating rear-end them. Don't stop, and morons who run the red light sideswipe someone. The bottom line is that people want to drive however they feel like driving, and they are mad when they can't. People need to grow up and behave like civilized human beings.
It is hard to obey the orange light when it is way too short to the point where if you aren't driving 32kph in a 72kph zone it is impossible to stop in time. I guess you have never seen a "blink and you miss it" half second orange light.
I've often wondered why a timer is not displayed in the green/yellow. They are almost all LED now, so it would not be that hard to have the number of seconds left (full on is >=10) in inverse video. (number is dark on a green/yellow foreground). I know I will look to see if the walk sign has a counter going when the light is green to give me an indication if a yellow is likely or not. Knowing how many seconds are left on the yellow/green would give me nearly infinitely more info than just the 3 lights.
So we save $50,000 per year for each camera.
The same cameras cost about $2000 per day to operate.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/council-votes-out-these-red-light-traffic-cameras-after-2-years-but-why/
Sorry but a program that costs 14 times more to operate than it saves is not effective and needs to be discontinued.
There's a movement growing rapidly in Europe to reduce traffic signs and lights, and they are finding that removing signs and lights can cause a rather dramtic reduction in accidents. A number of cities have done away with traffic lights and signs entirely with surprisingly good results. (EG: average trip times drop dramatically, accident rate plummets, people report greater satisfaction, etc)
I'm not saying that we should do away with all signs everywhere, but there is sufficient evidence available that the "common sense" utility of the traffic sign or a traffic light is clearly unproven.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
How much does each red light camera earn each day in moving violation fines?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Maybe people need to learn to gently stop and not on a dime like a race car driver?
noting an overall decline in traffic citations and right-angle crashes
So while the collision rate is up, the rate of the most dangerous collisions are down. I suspect there's a similar decline in deaths and injuries.
the net costs of accidents had climbed by more than $1 million
That's insurers' problem, and has no real effect on the state treasury. And having the cameras makes it easier to pin down blame and liability.
If this technology cost money, it would never, ever be installed. Unfortunately, it works "best" in places the signal intervals are incorrectly set. In NYC, it is very good at giving you "gridlock" tickets, if the car in front of you stops and you get caught in the "box". They are called scameras for a reason. And no, I don't run red lights, even at 3 am, thank you.
Some cities in Washington tried this not too long ago and also saw a spike in accidents in the intersection, so they removed them. They insisted the timing of the lights did not change, they only added the cameras. Apparently one of the issues is that many slam on their brakes when they see a red light coming, and get rear-ended as a result, where they might have just rolled up before the cameras were in place. Sometimes rolling stops are actually ok.
The IIHS study you cite in Philadelphia was for only 2 intersections, it was for a very limited time period, and they don't mention it in the study but crashes went up after installation of red light cameras. It is another in a long line of invalid and unprofessional studies that the IIHS has done on red light cameras. The 2007 Virginia DOT red light camera study is one of the most comprehensive studies done on the subject, and it also found crashes went up after cameras were installed.
(It's about the money.)
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I'm more worried about the injury and fatality rates, rather than the cost of the accidents.
I remember reading about a similar study about somewhere in Canada (sorry - don't remember the details) that said that while rear-end crashes were up (because of people hitting their brakes hard to avoid going through the intersection), the number of "T-bone" or right-angle crashes was down (because of less people going through on an "early red"). This study noted that the number of accidents didn't change much, but that injuries and fatalities were way down, because the T-bone accidents tend to be more dangerous.
The article quoted in the summary does mention that right-angle crashes are down in this report as well, but doesn't address injuries or fatalities.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Earn?
Honestly we shouldn't ever use law enforcement as a revenue generation tool. It creates perverse incentives for the government.
If we could be trusted to develop fair and reasonable laws without corruption, then maybe, but just like well run Communisim, I think that's something that only exists in theory.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
So, right angle (aka t-bone crashes) are down, but rear- end collisions are up? That doesn't sound so bad.
Right angle crashes can kill people. Rear-end collisions are fender benders.
Thank God red light cameras (and all other automated traffic law enforcement) are illegal in my state.
That's consistent with the Federal Highway Administration study that I cited. Yes, crashes increase, but their severities decrease, saving $50,000 per year in medical and repair costs.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I have noticed that many drivers speed up when the light is yellow. This fundamentally retarded action (why weren't you going the correct speed already?) no doubt accounts for the fact that rear-endings have increased.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
If we're going to be concerned about the taxpayer burden of the administration costs of the red light cameras, then it only makes sense to subtract the fines.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Although shortened yellow light are in and of itself a major problem, it doesn't make up for the amount of poor skilled drivers in areas where the yellow light is a reasonable length and they ignore safe driving practices anyway.
The real question you want answered is whether revenues are better with the cameras or without. If they make more money than they cost, they're a good thing. If they make less money than they cost, they're a bad thing.
The real problem is that they're run by government. They should be contracted out to private companies to make the most of free market economics.
I've been nabbed by a particular camera in brooklyn twice (pathetic, I know) due to where they put it. It's a large 3 lane road with short, and frequent lights. The road is mostly straight except for the one intersection they put the camera. That intersection bends and requires greater situational awareness of pedestrians and other drivers (and the curve). Not only that but this intersection is right where the Sun blinds drivers when its setting.
The first time it got me I had to slow for a car in front of me who slowed for a yellow light that he (and I) could have made. He then went through and I was stuck swerving to avoid him because of his rapid braking. So my eyes were on his car and not the light.
The second time I was blinded by the Sun and could not see the yellow light. So I was again watching the cars around me, because avoiding collisions is a higher priority than the lights.
So no, no one has the "right" to run a red light. However, there are a myriad of valid circumstances in which it is safer to do so -- and sometimes the camera is just meant as a revenue generating trap.
If safety *was* really improved at these cameras, then I would say they are fine -- but it seems the opposite is true.
do you want it to be like a NFL review? there they have to see if you broke the plane.
At the very lest have all of theme with the same min yellow time for intersection type / speed limit / and the same right on red rules.
Also very be lose on arrow tickets as well.
Show me somewhere in the U.S. where the yellow lights are a reasonable length, and I'll show you an intersection that has almost no red light violations. In study after study, this has been proven. If people are running red lights with any regularity, it is always because the yellow cycle was too short. Therefore, these lights only serve to punish people for failing to work around the city's poor traffic engineering.
Of course, this ignores the occasional driver who runs a red light because he or she isn't paying attention, but those drivers aren't affected by the cameras anyway. (Well, they're punished by them, but the cameras aren't a better deterrent than the "Oh, s**t! I just ran a red light!" realization that such drivers already have.)
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Are you trolling? These scameras ARE run by private companies. That's a huge part of why they're a scam. These companies then take their ill gotten profits and try to intimidate critics and do things like sue to keep people from actually voting on whether to have these infernal devices infest their cities. Go look up what happened in Houston, for example.
This seems like pretty old news at this point. Red-light cameras are put in place by private companies promising revenue. It was never about safety, and study after study has shown increased hazards at intersections where they are installed.
As usual in these cases, people need to remember to follow the money. One person you've never heard of, but should be thanked for exposing this issue, is Shawn Dow of Arizona. He has been all over the country teaching activists how to fight these things and make local legislators afraid of the people, instead of kow-towing to the rich lobbyists. He's been beating up on politicians (figuratively) for years, and winning.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Holy Shit! You cited The Blaze and got modded up. Man, that's Glenn Beck territory. Who says /. is liberal?
The 2007 Virginia DOT study showed that there was an overall increase in total crashes of 23% and an injury crash increase of 17% after the installation of RLCs at intersections. The study concludes that: "the cameras are associated with a net increase in comprehensive crash costs".
The 2005 FHWA study that you keep citing uses data from over a decade ago, and also showed a 10% increase in the fatality rate after red light cameras were installed. The data that the FHWA used was also anonymous, so there is no possibility of verifying the data or analysis by a third party.
And how much is a life worth? FHWA instituted the red-light campaign because running red lights now generates more fatalities than freeway accidents. Right-angle crashes are about 90% more likely to cause injury and death because cars have almost no protection from side impacts and SUV bumpers are the same height as the head of someone riding in a passenger car. These head injuries are almost always fatal.
It's phase out would be drastically sped up if several polyticks that voted for it were executed while being watched by those cameras.
I live in the Solomon Islands - Honiara to be exact (think Marines, think Guadalcanal). There are no traffic lights here, and the traffic cops are almost non-existent (except for carrying out road-side audits for licensing and registration). Anarchy more or less rules - there's lots of traffic, though most of the time it doesn't move very fast. At times, the traffic and pedestrians mix (next to the markets). There are very few accidents here. People learn to rely on their own skills and judgement, and NEVER trust the person in the other vehicle. Sort of like open source traffic management...
So because making a change has a short term cost we should never make it even though it has a long term gain*?
That seems remarkably short sighted, you must hate the concept of getting an education and taking short term financial opportunity cost for a long term financial gain.
* assuming the "net costs of accidents had climbed by more than $1 million at intersections with cameras" claim is true.
2000 a day in cost (a minus)
50,000 = 136.99 a day in savings (a plus)
say 3 tickets a day which is a bit pushing = about 300 dollars a day earn (a plus)
still not even close....
As for the 3 tickets a day, people are aware of the camera so not many people will obviously run it hence the whole safety factor which is a part of the savings. 3 tickets is probably an overestimate for the rare people who forgets or not familiar with the area. The savings is basically inverse of the fines. Camera based tickets also tend to be a bit cheaper then regular tickets but even assuming 300 dollar tickets won't meet the 2000 dollar daily cost unless say the yellow light duration was set dangerously shorter to increase tickets.
Is it still a win in your books when the cities shorten the yellow to generate more tickets?
.....
If cameras were not allowed to trigger until the crossing lane's lights were GREEN, and there were statutory yellow durations and statutory all-ways-red durations, it would eliminate all this yellow shortening nonsense, and maybe the cameras would catch the scoff-laws they were intended to catch.
And that's how they work in other countries. There is a minimum for yellow, and it depends on the speed limit of the road.
If there were laws that introduced your suggestions and made cities also liable for accidents at intersections where the yellow phase is too short, then traffic cameras would make intersections safer.
If, for example, it was broken and never changed. I'd look both ways to check safety and then I'd run the light.
I think this is even legal.
Best,
--PM
So what effect does a red-light camera have on people who aren't paying enough attention to see that there is a red-light there in the first place?
Instead of ticketing they could take them off the road for a while. So I can drive in safety while they sit at home texting or drinking.
I'm sorry but this is distorting the statistics and neglecting problems with the vehicle fleet that cause fatalities at ALL intersections, whether or not there are stop lights present.
According to the FHWA red light running accounted for less than 10% of deaths at intersections in 2008. And this number is roughly 2% of the total traffic deaths in the US.
http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/redlight/
The primary way to make stop lights safer is to increase the yellow time and have a period where all the lights are red. But this ISN'T done with most red light camera installations because it reduces revenues to the point where the red light camera revenues don't pay for the operation of the cameras.
In NJ there have been several cases where red light cameras have been found to be operating at traffic signals with yellow light periods shorter than the basic requirements. There was recently a state-wide shutdown of red light cameras because of this problem.
http://brick.patch.com/articles/red-light-cams-shut-down-over-yellow-light-length-concerns
Then of course there is the history of municipalities intentionally shortening yellow light periods for profit:
http://blog.motorists.org/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening-yellow-light-times-for-profit/
I'd really like to see a graduated green light implemented that would provide drivers with a better idea how much time is remains before changing. Perhaps a (few) additional ring(s) which would switch off in 5 or 10 second increments.
Anecdotally it feels to me that an awful lot of people don't even bother trying to stop, I frequently see people entering lights on red.
That would require that drivers, aka "people," act rationally and, in my experience, very few do. I hate those idiots that race right up to a stop sign, or stop light, and have to jam on their brakes because they're too impatient to coast from a moderate distance out.
They are about cash not safety that is what the light was for badly timed lights cause problems and problem drivers.
3 strikes license laws would put the k abash on those folks.
But then all they want is money.
Distracted drivers are the problem and cameras are not going to fix that. Cellphones are at the top of the distraction list. If the government wants to do something constructive here they should ban cellphone use in cars - full stop. But that's not going to happen as long as AT&T and Verizon are allowed to lobby congress and throw money at their reelection campaigns.
"Those mid-red light runners completely missed that there was a redlight there at all! They didn't run the red-light because they wanted to, they ran the red-light because they weren't paying attention."
,s tops, and red light are fully optional. I have been nearly killed by enough of those idiot, compared with day when it happens exceedingly rarely. Now red light camera could be useful at a few intersection i know of, where fucking driver thinks that because there seem to be no driver on the other side then it is free for all despite the red light. And I am not even counting the idiot which think because I am on two wheel , right-of-way & stops suddenly stop counting.
Driver which decide that because it is night, right of way
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Here's how speed cameras used to work in the UK when I lived there:
Road would have a big crash when there hadn't previously been one for years.
Not sure what your point is here, a crash is a crash. Try telling the parent whos kid has just been upended on the front of someone's car because they were driving too fast to stop that 'oh there hasn't been a crash here 'for years''. I'm sure they'd sympathize.
Government would install a speed camera.
No they wouldn't. I know it's easy to just say 'The government', but they have no say on where or when a camera gets installed. Budgets for cameras come out of local council money and are not just installed because 'there was a crash'. Often petitions are put up by residents or there is such an acknowledged danger in a built up area that the decision is made by locals/councils and the police to erect a camera.
If you want proof of how much the Governement have a 'say' in police cameras, go and visit Swindon. They have had them (pretty much) all removed now, that was a decision by the local government - don't recall the reason but it made the papers a few years back.
Police collect fines from people driving past the camera who don't know it's there.
No they don't. The fines go - like everything else - into the big pot that we call 'Tax', the Police don't get 'funded' by the cameras. Also they are obliged by law to place cameras in an obvious place, there is also a legal requirement to have camera signs placed in plain sight at least 100 (maybe it's 200) yards before the camera and that;s just for mobile cameras (in those hard-to-spot (not)) Police vans) for fixed cameras the requirement is much higher and the signs have to be a minimum size (which is about 2 foot high) and you'll find them something like within a radius of half a mile or so - again I forget the actual numbers, but there are statutary reqs for placing cameras and signs.
Oh and they have to be painted bright yellow and be visible from the road for a few hundred yards.
Any driver that really doesn't spot them deserves the fine.
Locals either take a different route away from the camera, or hit the brakes just before the camera, then accelerate back to their normal driving speed just after it.
I won't deny there is a lot of braking and accelerating but cameras are there to deter. The point is the cameras are just making sure the legal speed limit is being enforced at particular areas where speeding occurs. The fact a car brakes and accelerates means they are now not at 'full pelt' and a well placed camera usually helps stop drivers putting pedal to the floor in long runs where there are residential areas. Locals can take a different route, that's not the point. The area the camera is in is often the only route or if not its usually on a road where high speeds are doable but not wanted.
Yes they do. Funny that. and so they keep them. Try living on a straight line street in a built up area, where the speed limit is 20 - 30 depending and you have to contend with cars doing 40 - 60. Anyway, most councils can no longer afford cameras so have resorted to speed bumps of objects that narrow the road forcing oncoming traffic to give way. Those are more tiresome than slowing down because of a speed camera.
Except in most previous years there hadn't been a big crash at that spot either.
Again I am not sure what your point is apart from showing your ignorance and obvious laziness to just blame the government.
If people did drive to the speed limit and were more focussed on the road than distracted or didn't tailgate then there would be no need for cameras.
BTW this article is about Traffic Light Cameras not speed cameras. People that jump red lights deliberately deserve anything they get. The fact people are rear-ending just goes to show that the person *behind* is at fault not the person braking *for the red light*. The person that gets rear ended will have a strong claim from the person behind to pay for the damages.
The summary is wonderful in its simplicity and one-sidedness. Red light drivers KILL pedestrians, cyclist and other drivers. Now the same people are rear ended. So? Assholes get hurt instead of assholes hurting others. The only way you hit someone who breaks suddenly for a red light is if you are to close and you yourself were ignoring the orange light.
And the only way you get suddenly stopping for a red light is if you don't slow down on orange.
The only issue here is that some people shouldn't be driving cars.
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If red light violations get reduced by 36 percent, and then by another 96 percent... it really can't be much.
Just give it up and learn to love the roundabout.
How about the goverments start ticketing the jerks who park their trucks and SUVs halfway in the intersection
in the left lane blocking your view and preventing you from making a right-on-red? What about arresting
the jerks who honk their horns, swear, and threaten to beat you up because you couldn't see well enough
to make a right-on-red? What about making the cops actually obey the traffic laws themselves instead
of always rolling through red lights? What about changing our society so the we stop creating people
who are ego-centric, anti-social road-ragers trying to shave a micro-second off of their commute whilst
putting everyone else in danger?
Humanity sucks. That's the simple reality.
One of my biggest complaints about any traffic light is the sometimes ridiculously short yellow lights. Near my home there is a traffic signal on the main road that only changes if a car is present at the intersection waiting to turn. The yellow light is barely 2 seconds, no where near enough time for a vehicle traveling 30MPH (~48km/h). I have seen heavy trucks rolling along when that idiotic light changes and the truck has choice but to roll right through that intersection, your not stopping 20+ tons rolling along at 30mph in 2 seconds.
I always wanted a 4th "warning" light before the yellow, I have seen them somewhere in Europe, maybe it was the UK. At most city intersections the flashing "don't walk" for pedestrians usually precedes the yellow light so if your in a heavy vehicle you can determine that you need to reduce your speed and anticipate a yellow -> red light. But outside of cities there are few sidewalks and even fewer pedestrian signals. The 4th signal can be simple to add and does not require replacing existing lights. You illuminate the yellow light while the green light is still lit, or flash the yellow light. Then the green light goes out, yellow steady and finally red. Gives a nice warning to drivers further down the road to slow down. Maybe even try to establish a standard time length for the 4th signal, say 5 seconds until yellow.
Maybe people need to learn to gently stop and not on a dime like a race car driver?
But the key to winning the commute is rapid acceleration and rapid deceleration. The distance is too short to win in the pits, traffic effectively limits everyone to the same top speed, so it's only the short windows of changing speed where a driver can distinguish himself.
this is similar to what they found with regard to traffic circles in my state, MD. The number of accidents increases, but the damage to cars and people in those accidents decreases -- Lower speed fender benders & side swipes instead of higher speed T-bones.
Wouldn't these accidents be prevented by simply not informing the public where the cameras were installed, and camouflaging them?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Not really relevant. You're making violators pay $600k per year in fines to save $50k/yr in damages. Due to perverse incentives for things like yellow-light shortening it is hard to really consider the violators guilty of much of anything.
If you instead just lengthened the yellow lights a bit chances are you'd save far more in costs, and there would be no overhead beyond the cost to set it up.
When a light turns yellow and it has a camera mounted I'm confronted with a choice - stop or continue. I need to consider the fact that many jurisdictions shorten yellow lights on intersections with cameras. All of this leads me to make a decision to stop when I would otherwise tend to continue. If I'm making this decision absurdly close to the intersection, then I'm going to have to use the ABS to accomplish this, and anybody following me will need to do the same.
That's consistent with the Federal Highway Administration study that I cited. Yes, crashes increase, but their severities decrease, saving $50,000 per year in medical and repair costs.
But that's got to be at least slightly offset by the more frequent traffic jams these increased fender-bender type accidents cause: other drivers' time, wasted fuel/idling cars, not to mention bringing out the cops and EMTs more, possibly towtrucks..IOW, the logistics, not just the direct costs regarding only the two cars and their drivers involved in the accident.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
They're just treating the gas and brake pedals like a switch, not a rheostat. Just like driving games.
Gas full on or off & brake full on or off. I got pretty good at those games, but in real cars the ABS gets in the way! :-)
I wonder if this also takes into account drivers who are temporaraly blinded at night by the flashes of the camera. Shoot, even on the highway, I am sometimes temporaraly blinded by a flash at an intersection on the access road. I would file a complaint, but don't know who to file it with.
So far the comments have been a lot of bitching and moaning about the cameras. The real problem is the people driving do not read the actual laws. While they vary some from state to state, at least most I have seen indicate the yellow light is to warn you the red is commong and your ARE REQUIRED to be out of the intersection before it turns red. People tend to conveniently forget about the last part.
Here is Oregon it is so bad that cross traffic has to wait after the light turns green to ensure it is safe. Except for lights where cameras are known to exist.
I lived in Germany for a few years and worked for a software company there. Another American in the company was on the Autobahn sometime after 2:00am not staying right with no traffic on the road. The law in Germany plainly states you stay right unless you are passing, witch by the way is the law in many states here. This was 1993 and he got a ticket costing over $400 dollars. Guess what, he followed the law after that.
That is the reason for the cameras. Dick heads thinking they are more important than the other people on the road are the problem. Red light runners are right there with the ass holes that pull into the intersection and block traffic in the other direction when the light changes.
Read the law, get over it.
Tickets are not valid unless they are personally served within 90 days.
Actually, one of the problems with these cameras, is that your behavior and having to pay are moreso decoupled than what everyone is used to. That is, even if you don't go through red lights or speed, you might end up having to pay. Well, that was always a risk anyway; what I mean is that it's more likely to happen to you. Our society had centuries to come up with processes for handling criminal violations, and somehow the use of cameras meant that all that experience (both in the system and in your own skills) and law and culture was wiped out, by making a previously-criminal citation a civil one. And in US, that also mean various rules of evidence and basic rights to trials, were thrown out too. Unless you're an experience civil lawyer (are you?) everything you think you know about government abuses and citizens' recourse to handling those abuses, doesn't apply.
Lose the civil citations and use conventional law to give criminal citations to offenders, just like what would happen if a cop pulled you over for speeding or running lights (can't we agree that the way this gets handled when cops are involved, is pretty reasonable and well-established?!) and the cameras are no problem at all.
If you've got a problem with that, then I'd have to ask: why are you against cops citing people for purposes of public safety?
Ok, I'd be an asshole to ask a leading bullshit question like that, but you see, you are doing the exact same thing when you arrogantly assume that the person who gets a bill in the mail, happened to have committed the offense that is claimed. No trial. No fifth or sixth amendment. No burden of proof. Get it?
If you happen to think the fifth and sixth amendments are bad ideas and ought to be repealed, that's not necessarily insane. Make your case. FWIW, though, they haven't been repealed yet.
The best metric isn't total accidents. It's total costs.
Damages include:
Loss of life,
Direct damages from injuries and direct property damages,
Opportunity costs e.g. loss of productivity due to injuries or temporary lack of transportation,
and more.
If we trade 1000 high-cost accidents for 1100 low-cost accidents, it might be a good trade.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Preach it brother!
But longer yellows and longer red-to-cross-green delays don't make money for city managers or camera manufacturers. Money is usually the reason governments fail to exercise common sense.
Somehow I don't understand why it is the fault of the cameras that idiot drivers are following too close and decide to speed up to beat the light, then run into the car in front because that driver decided to obey the law.
If this were an experiment, could it support the hypothesis that red light cameras cause accidents? We would need some scientific method and statistical analysis to support that conclusion. Were all the other variables controlled? Was the rate of increase in accidents zero before the experiment, was traffic, and hence risk increasing, was the duration long enough to show the trend. Anyway, let's suppose it did prove that many bad drivers can ignore stoplights and avoid accidents, I am still in favor of catching these bastards each and every time that they do it and punishing them hard. Zero tolerance works. Crack down consistently on trivial offenses and you will get fewer serious ones. These are most likely the same drivers who exceed the speed limit and change lanes unsafely in their passion to save a few minutes off their commute. They are happy to risk your life, and also that of your family. Catching them for those more serious offenses often requires dangerous driving by cops. It is better to catch them when they are going slower and under conditions that are easier for gathering the evidence. An automated camera is the perfect way, because it is fair, consistent, and safe, and produces incontrovertible evidence. I am OK with it being a revenue raising tax too. Bad driving costs us all money, so let the ones who do it pay. We need more red light cameras.
Heavy is the head that wears the tinfoil hat.