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Florida DOT Cuts Yellow Light Delay Ignoring Federal Guidelines, Citations Soar
New submitter zlives writes in with news that Florida's DOT changed some language in their yellow light timing regulations, leading to a decrease in the yellow delay. Especially at lights with red light cameras. "From the article: 'Red light cameras generated more than $100 million in revenue last year in approximately 70 Florida communities, with 52.5 percent of the revenue going to the state. The rest is divided by cities, counties, and the camera companies. In 2013, the cameras are on pace to generate $120 million.' I wonder what the camera company cut is?"
At least one area has promised to undo the reduction now that they have been caught.
This has been proven to put the public at risk of property damage, of injury and of loss of life.
The people who made this decision need to be removed from office at the very least and potentially criminally prosecuted for endangerment [of a child].
There must be sufficient time for a fully loaded semi-trailer to react to the change, and safely come to a stop, or proceed through the intersection, from at least 5mph under to 5mph over the posted speed limit, in wet road conditions, or it's not safe. These cities are risking your safety to raise more money from bogus fines.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
The #1 thing you can do to reduce collisions in an intersection is lengthen the yellow. Go ask AAA, they've got plenty of data on it.
Shit like this, and this is not the first time it happens, proves that traffic cameras are 100% NOT about safety, they are about money.
Wont someone think of the kickbacks?
Doing this *endangers* the public. Switching from yellow to red too quickly for drivers to safely stop will end up causing accidents, either from slamming on their brakes or paying more attention to the light instead of the road. The point of the traffic lights is to regulate traffic flow and keep the public safe. Adjusting the time so that fewer drivers can safely stop and need to have lightning reflexes and be staring at the light instead of the road will lead to more accidents.
I smell a lawsuit brewing which will undo all the revenues. $120 million dollars? Well, now the lawyers for the next person to get run over at one of these modified lights can sue the government for on account of the timing adjustments to "increase revenue". And you just know some lawyers out there are going to advertise their services in these areas...
The trick is to prevent people thinking of this as revenue. It's indication of a problem. You don't want that indicator to go up. Perhaps state or federal law should pressure local governments to make that indicator go down.
San Diego (and several surrounding communities) recently discontinued it's red-light camera program, citing inflated fines to motorists with minimal payouts to the city, and and *increased* accident rate after installations of the cameras.
We also had the short-yellow problem several years ago when they were first installed, which was quicky fixed after public outcry.
Our new mayor is a jerk. But in this case, at least he is being a jerk to folks that deserve it.
Like any government agency, police departments don't exist with the main priority of protecting and serving. Their primarily purpose is to generate revenue.
This pisses me off so much. Research studies have shown that increasing amber delays is one of the best ways to reduce both fatal and non-fatal collisions at intersections.
These municipalities think that more red light camera revenue = more money = great and glorious government. They forget two things:
- Fines, cost of repairs, and insurance premiums eat away at their citizens' bank accounts. Less money = less spending = less sales taxes, and a lot of angry, pissed off citizens.
- It's not a zero-sum game within the closed system of citizens and the government. The vendors get a lot of those fines.
So the net result is a slower economy, tax revenue is not nearly as high as expected, and vendors line their pockets.
(I recently worked for years in the highway safety sector, and one of my colleagues, a former cop, did a research paper on this subject. He started the research with a high opinion of red light cameras, but found that red light cameras had no significant effect on fatalities while significantly increasing non-fatal collisions.)
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I worked as a traffic accident investigator for a few years. Part of my job was figuring out the timing of traffic lights and if they were the cause of an accident. Shortening yellow lights kills people, old people and big trucks dont stop very fast. This is the Florida government killing people for money.
The really sad part is if they were really clever they would shorten the yellow 1/2 a second but keep the whole intersection red for a 1/2 a second. That way they could rip off Floridians without killing them.
AdFuel
Where do you live, rural Alaska? In many urban areas, if you do that you will in fact get someone merging into that space about every 5 seconds.
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In my town, the walk/don't walk signs have a display that counts down the seconds left for the "walk" time. Then the red "don't walk" symbol pops up, and shortly after that the light turns yellow.
It's extremely helpful -- if I'm half a block away and the sign says 12 seconds left, I know I'm going to get through the light on green. If I see 2 seconds left, I know it'll be red and there's no point in doing anything other than coasting.
The signs we have look sort of like this (but without the glasses looking symbol on top): http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/tools_solve/ped_scdproj/webinar052809/las_vegas/images/image081.jpg
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
One thing that would be cheap and effective in my mind would be to take the yellow time multiplied by the speed limit, and paint a line on the road that distance away from the light. That would take some of the guesswork out of yellow lights. That is, if you are driving the speed limit and the light turns yellow - if you past the line you can proceed through the intersection, and if you are behind the line you need to stop. No having to make a quick judgment of your speed and your distance from the light and guessing of the length of the yellow. This would have a secondary benefit that once the line is in place, it would make it tougher for them to arbitrarily change the yellow light time because then they would have to send a crew out to repaint the line on the road.