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Red Light Camera Use Declined In 2013 For the First Time
SonicSpike writes "2013 may be a turning point for red-light cameras across the United States. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a non-profit largely funded by auto insurance companies, this year is the first time in nearly two decades that the number of American cities with red-light cameras has fallen — the systems were installed in 509 communities as of November 2013. While a single-year drop may not ultimately mean much, legislators across the country are increasingly agitated about the cameras. Bills are also pending in Florida and Ohio that would ban the devices entirely. A state representative in Iowa has also twice introduced legislation to ban RLCs (he was not successful). Part of this backlash has to do with the (sometimes accurate) perception that RLCs are a moneymaking scheme, pure and simple."
I am reminded of a conversation I had with my daughter when she was about four. We were driving around and came to a stoplight. "What does red mean?" I asked her. "Stop", she replied. "And what does green mean?" I said. "GO!" she yelled. "And what does yellow mean?" She thought for a minute, and said, "Go real fast?"
This gave me some insight into the driving habits of her mother.
I know that red light cameras have sometimes been abused, but what are we supposed to do about the pandemic of red-light-running?
Proverbs 21:19
if you want to contract out police work
We don't want to contract out police work. Ever. Why even bother having a government if you're going to contract out its essential functions?
The profit motive should never come anywhere near law enforcement. The moment anyone in government starts thinking of profit instead of public service is the moment tyranny begins. The only thing that should guide a police department is how they can best serve their community, not how they can best increase their budget.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
And being a San Diego native, I was pretty damn surprised as well, because San Diego is a big city for law enforcement-bootlicking. Here in San Diego, a red-light camera ticket was around 500 bucks, and surprise, only 100 of those dollars from each ticket went back to the city. The other 400 bucks? You guessed it, a private corporation owned by somebody who knew people in high places.
Because of this city's horrible public transportation and suburban sprawl, you need a car to be able function. So you get a red light ticket, which costs you 500 bucks, and now you have to cancel your vacation or choose between paying rent or the ticket. I once saw a red light camera on Aero Drive off the 15 north with its head beaten off, hanging by a threat. I'd like to shake the hand of that good samaritan who beat the shit out of that fucking camera.
My kingdom for mod points.
I argue that money paid for fines should be incinerated. Seriously. Government, whether it's city hall, the local police, the statehouse, or the national government, should never, ever have a financial gain when its citizens commit crimes. Ever. Scratch that; nobody, not government, not charities, not schools, nobody, should have a financial interest in citizens committing crimes. Make crime a source of income, and suddenly you find that whomever benefits from fines thinks a lot of things should be crimes.
Crime is bad (well, real crime like murder, rape and robbery). Nobody should benefit from it.
Restitution is different; that money should go to making the victim whole (not rich, whole), as much as possible.
Drivers will adapt. When they learn that there are 1-2 seconds during which all lights are red, passing a red light two seconds after it turned red will become normal.
Philipp
Says the 10 millionth person who's failed to actually look at the studies. Sorry, buddy, there's actual science that says you're wrong. What you have is a hypothesis. Guess what, it's an obvious one that's been tested and proven false over and over again.
Guess what else the studies show, all else being equal, adding a RLC to an intersection increases the number of accidents and injuries. Now is the time to go educate yourself and, if you're intellectually honest, change your mind.
The problem is that no one has interest in doing it right. As far as I am concerned, the camera-at-traffic-light was solved in the 90s, when I was at MIT. I worked on the project for a while, and I remember the problems that we faced (and solved). Even better, time has made every single one of them trivial, through better cameras, faster and cooler processing, and cheap reliable communication.
So, here is how to make traffic cameras that work and save lives:
1. Once yellow is displayed, monitor the speed of the first vehicle in each lane that should be stopping.
2. Do not turn on the green (for any other lane) until every yellow (and later red) facing vehicle has initiated a deceleration that can bring to rest before the intersection.
3. Start flashing the red early if you detect a car that appears to be going too fast to stop before entering the intersection, but too slow to to enter it before the red is scheduled to appear.
4. Issue tickets to everyone entering the interception on red. As you don't delay the appearance of the red, this won't reduce the number of tickets.
5. Send warnings to people who have delayed the green, but have still come to a stop, reminding them that emergency stops are wearing down their shocks, tires, and brakes.
6. Send warnings to people who have crossed at flashing red, or speeding tickets if they did so by breaking the speed limit.
Note that none of this makes the green come earlier, or the red come later. You can still use an underlying, tested, proven reliable system to ensure that the new-fanged system does not give green to the wrong people at the same time.
This is going to save lives, and it was successfully testing in Boston last millennium. OK, so after a few weeks, the hardware went kaput, but that left the standard traffic light in place and there was no harm done. We lost interest. With today's tech, I could rebuild the system for one tenth of the price, and it would probably last a long longer.
No good deed goes unpunished...