Red light cameras = more traffic congestion

[Bronzeage]

Accidents are not caused by people going through yellow lights. But accidents can be caused by people slamming on brakes to avoid light turning red for a fraction of a second.
Accidents involving red light running happen when somebody runs a red light when the cross-traffic is already green. If red light cameras were calibrated to catch those offenders (much more rare, and thus ineffective to raise revenue) rather than catch regular drivers on a technicality they'd be much more popular.


Yet cities do it for revenue. That should tell you all about their effectiveness. As far as body shops, they can do brisk business on rear end collisions as well.

As with most laws, the root intention is too protect the majority of the population from the small fraction who thinks their needs supersede those of their neighbors. There will always be some anti-social types who see traffic signals and signs as impediments to their daily life and which can be disregarded when there is little perceived chance of being caught. Since there are so many traffic lights and so few policemen, the odds are always in their favor.

But red light cameras are calibrated such that they ensnare many of the "majority of the population", and not just the "small fraction" of red light runners. That's the problem. It could be solved by increasing the time between light going red and cameras being active to say 1 second.

If we can all agree that failing to stop when a traffic light is red is a bad thing, not a sometimes bad thing, this discussion would make a lot more sense.

If a caution light is visible to a driver, they are obligated to stop.

Wrong. It is illegal to stop on yellow, if you cannot do it safely, which means almost anytime you are less than 100 feet from the intersection when it turns yellow.

Accidents are caused by people who run yellow lights.

Wrong again. The empirical evidence shows that many accidents are caused by drivers who brake at yellow lights when it is unsafe to so, and that red-light cameras cause an increase in the frequency of drivers engaging in such unsafe stops that violate the laws associated with yellow lights.

Please tell me how your "illegal to stop on yellow" statute is enforced. If a person approaching an intersection stops because they see the light turn yellow, and are then struck by a vehicle from behind, it would seem the second driver was following too close and failed to leave a sufficient distance between his vehicle and the one ahead of him.

Can this second driver actually go to court and claim the first driver stopped in an unsafe manner?

In the state of Louisiana, our laws which deal with yellow lights state that if the light turns yellow while it is in the driver's field of vision, the driver is obligated to stop. As far as I know, there is no provision exempting drivers farther back in traffic from the consequences of hitting the car ahead of them.

 

[ronburgundy]

Accidents are not caused by people going through yellow lights. But accidents can be caused by people slamming on brakes to avoid light turning red for a fraction of a second.
Accidents involving red light running happen when somebody runs a red light when the cross-traffic is already green. If red light cameras were calibrated to catch those offenders (much more rare, and thus ineffective to raise revenue) rather than catch regular drivers on a technicality they'd be much more popular.


Yet cities do it for revenue. That should tell you all about their effectiveness. As far as body shops, they can do brisk business on rear end collisions as well.

As with most laws, the root intention is too protect the majority of the population from the small fraction who thinks their needs supersede those of their neighbors. There will always be some anti-social types who see traffic signals and signs as impediments to their daily life and which can be disregarded when there is little perceived chance of being caught. Since there are so many traffic lights and so few policemen, the odds are always in their favor.

But red light cameras are calibrated such that they ensnare many of the "majority of the population", and not just the "small fraction" of red light runners. That's the problem. It could be solved by increasing the time between light going red and cameras being active to say 1 second.

If we can all agree that failing to stop when a traffic light is red is a bad thing, not a sometimes bad thing, this discussion would make a lot more sense.

If a caution light is visible to a driver, they are obligated to stop.

Wrong. It is illegal to stop on yellow, if you cannot do it safely, which means almost anytime you are less than 100 feet from the intersection when it turns yellow.

Accidents are caused by people who run yellow lights.

Wrong again. The empirical evidence shows that many accidents are caused by drivers who brake at yellow lights when it is unsafe to so, and that red-light cameras cause an increase in the frequency of drivers engaging in such unsafe stops that violate the laws associated with yellow lights.

Please tell me how your "illegal to stop on yellow" statute is enforced.

Whether an action can be easily prosecuted is irrelevant to whether it violates the law, and more importantly whether it violates principles that increase safety.

If a person approaching an intersection stops because they see the light turn yellow, and are then struck by a vehicle from behind, it would seem the second driver was following too close and failed to leave a sufficient distance between his vehicle and the one ahead of him.

A driver following more than 10 car lengths behind would still often hit a driver who slammed their brakes when the light turned yellow, even if they noticed the car was stopping and reacted in a reasonable amount of time. There is no plausible distance that is "safe" when a person engages in such a behavior. On no busy highway or street anywhere in the world are cars reliably spaced even half the distance needed. Just imagine what all cars being 100 + feet apart on every road would look like and entail. It is a world of pure fiction. The fact that the law automatically places blame on the car that rear-ended doesn't mean that driver in front did not break the law and do something inherently unsafe that was the primary and most avoidable cause of the accident. It is a purely pragmatic choice of simply making one party always responsible no matter the specific instance, because there would rarely be the evidence needed to decide who was responsible in most instances.

In the state of Louisiana, our laws which deal with yellow lights state that if the light turns yellow while it is in the driver's field of vision, the driver is obligated to stop.

That is false. This site describes basis driving laws in each state and says ....
"In Indiana it is not illegal to deliberately drive through a yellow light. A yellow light means only that traffic facing the light is “warned” that a red light will soon follow. As long as your vehicle entered the intersection or passed the crosswalk or limit line before the light turned red, you haven’t broken the law."

That is a good thing, because your made up rule would get lots of people killed. A yellow light is often visible to a driver already in the intersection. So, your rule means that you must slam on the brakes the moment any light turns yellow, no matter how close to or even in the intersection you are.
Nowhere has such a rule.

 

[crispy]

You are not speaking for any country. The yellow wouldn't exist if it meant the same thing as red. A red means that it is almost certainly far more dangerous to continue than the brake. A yellow means that it is safer to continue than brake, if you can clear the intersection at your current speed.
At 35mph, it requires about 130 feet to safely come to a stop on a dry road, without skidding and with giving drivers behind you sufficient time to also react and brake. At 35mph you would travel 150 feet in 3 seconds, and thus clear the intersection during the yellow light.

So, unless you are more than 130 feet from the intersection when it turns yellow, you should continue and not brake.

I have looked up the law. Danish traffic law makes it abundantly clear that yellow light means stop, just as much as red light, with the exception that you may pass if you are so close that it is unsafe to stop. I am quite sure it means the same in most other places. Please, look up the law where it applies to you, and tell me what it says. It definitely is not meant as a warning that red light is gonna come soon.

I think we already agree on the part, that if it is unsafe to stop then you shouldn't.

Braking on yellow is a violation of the rules, anytime it is safer to continue, which means anytime you are less than 130 feet at 35 mph (or less than 85 feet at 25 mph) when it turns yellow. That situation occurs during almost every single yellow light at busy intersections. Thus, is it objectively less safe and a violation of the rules not to continue on yellow hundreds of times every day at busy intersections. A camera makes people biased toward stopping it those unsafe situations, and the evidence from accident rates shows that they trigger far more accident causing decisions to brake when it is unsafe than they trigger people to brake when it is safer to do so.

So the fines are given to people running yellow lights or what?

 

[Bronzeage]

Accidents are not caused by people going through yellow lights. But accidents can be caused by people slamming on brakes to avoid light turning red for a fraction of a second.
Accidents involving red light running happen when somebody runs a red light when the cross-traffic is already green. If red light cameras were calibrated to catch those offenders (much more rare, and thus ineffective to raise revenue) rather than catch regular drivers on a technicality they'd be much more popular.


Yet cities do it for revenue. That should tell you all about their effectiveness. As far as body shops, they can do brisk business on rear end collisions as well.

As with most laws, the root intention is too protect the majority of the population from the small fraction who thinks their needs supersede those of their neighbors. There will always be some anti-social types who see traffic signals and signs as impediments to their daily life and which can be disregarded when there is little perceived chance of being caught. Since there are so many traffic lights and so few policemen, the odds are always in their favor.

But red light cameras are calibrated such that they ensnare many of the "majority of the population", and not just the "small fraction" of red light runners. That's the problem. It could be solved by increasing the time between light going red and cameras being active to say 1 second.

If we can all agree that failing to stop when a traffic light is red is a bad thing, not a sometimes bad thing, this discussion would make a lot more sense.

If a caution light is visible to a driver, they are obligated to stop.

Wrong. It is illegal to stop on yellow, if you cannot do it safely, which means almost anytime you are less than 100 feet from the intersection when it turns yellow.

Accidents are caused by people who run yellow lights.

Wrong again. The empirical evidence shows that many accidents are caused by drivers who brake at yellow lights when it is unsafe to so, and that red-light cameras cause an increase in the frequency of drivers engaging in such unsafe stops that violate the laws associated with yellow lights.

Please tell me how your "illegal to stop on yellow" statute is enforced.

Whether an action can be easily prosecuted is irrelevant to whether it violates the law, and more importantly whether it violates principles that increase safety.

If a person approaching an intersection stops because they see the light turn yellow, and are then struck by a vehicle from behind, it would seem the second driver was following too close and failed to leave a sufficient distance between his vehicle and the one ahead of him.

A driver following more than 10 car lengths behind would still often hit a driver who slammed their brakes when the light turned yellow, even if they noticed the car was stopping and reacted in a reasonable amount of time. There is no plausible distance that is "safe" when a person engages in such a behavior. On no busy highway or street anywhere in the world are cars reliably spaced even half the distance needed. Just imagine what all cars being 100 + feet apart on every road would look like and entail. It is a world of pure fiction. The fact that the law automatically places blame on the car that rear-ended doesn't mean that driver in front did not break the law and do something inherently unsafe that was the primary and most avoidable cause of the accident. It is a purely pragmatic choice of simply making one party always responsible no matter the specific instance, because there would rarely be the evidence needed to decide who was responsible in most instances.

In the state of Louisiana, our laws which deal with yellow lights state that if the light turns yellow while it is in the driver's field of vision, the driver is obligated to stop.

That is false. This site describes basis driving laws in each state and says ....
"In Indiana it is not illegal to deliberately drive through a yellow light. A yellow light means only that traffic facing the light is “warned” that a red light will soon follow. As long as your vehicle entered the intersection or passed the crosswalk or limit line before the light turned red, you haven’t broken the law."

That is a good thing, because your made up rule would get lots of people killed. A yellow light is often visible to a driver already in the intersection. So, your rule means that you must slam on the brakes the moment any light turns yellow, no matter how close to or even in the intersection you are.
Nowhere has such a rule.

All of this reminds me of the debate in the 60's about seat belts. There was always someone ready to list all the reasons a seat belt would cause more harm than good, despite the advantages of not being thrown through a windshield during a collision. In the "Watch out for the guy behind you," school of traffic safety, drivers are expected to model their driving in such a way as to protect tailgaters. This is something I find quite strange.

I did not mention Indiana in my post, which was strictly about Louisiana, where the traffic code is quite clear on the matter. In this state, a yellow light is a command to stop, not a warning that time to cross the intersection is limited.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Actually, it's even worse than that; Svenson's 1981 paper on this topic in Acta Psychologica found that 93% of US drivers surveyed rated their skills as above the median.

I think this is more a matter of our having problems perceiving non-normal distributions. While obviously only 50% of drivers can be above the median I have no problem with 93% being above the mean.

A driver who notes that he's more likely to have been in the right than the wrong when there's an issue on the road but who is untrained in statistics will reasonably reach the conclusion that he's above average.

So I am comfortable with the idea of red light cameras, but only where they are shown not to have a deleterious effect on yellow light safety - which is a matter of the local driving culture, and varies from location to location.

Cameras meeting this test: None.

They are either shown problematic, weaseled (cameras tend to move crashes from the intersection to the street near the intersection, if you don't count those crashes you can show they "work"; or compared to nearby non-camera intersections--oops, they show an increase in traffic from drivers avoiding the camera) or not studied.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Traffic cams will never be revenue generators, though some may see that as their only purpose. The actual purpose of a traffic cam is to remove the feeling of immunity from consequences many drivers feel, as they sail through a caution light which will turn red while they are still in the intersection.

In practice cameras only stay at intersections where they are revenue generators.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And in time people will become aware of and exploit that 1 second.
The light has to be red for the camera to activate. You have to hit the embedded sensors just before the intersection. Yellow lights are usually 4 seconds in 35 mph zones. You have to be pretty damn wrong to get busted by a red light camera. And this is what people hate about them. Being extremely wrong. And there's a picture of them being extremely wrong. And everyone who saw the flash laughed at them. Who doesn't enjoy watching someone else get busted for a traffic violation? I know I do.
All of a sudden it's all about their rights under the Sixth Amendment. Yeah, right.

Cameras are normally not at 4 second/35 mph intersections.

- - - Updated - - -

Seems like there's a few cities in the US that need to reprogram their traffic lights.

Either that or you're all full of shit.

replace/a few/many/

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Seems like there's a few cities in the US that need to reprogram their traffic lights.

Either that or you're all full of shit.

There is nothing wrong with the traffic light programming. The problem is that the cameras impact decision making in a way that pits fear of getting a ticket against doing what is safest. The whole reason for yellow lights is NOT to tell people to brake, but to provide a warning that the light will turn red in a few seconds and they should begin to brake if they more than a few seconds from the intersection, but continue through if they can easily clear the intersection in that time, especially when their is traffic behind them. When you add a camera (especially when all drivers know they are designed to extort whenever possible), some people get paranoid and brake as soon as they see yellow, even when they would easily clear the intersection before the red. But other people will not overreact this way and go through the intersection when it makes sense to do so. Thus, the cameras greatly increase the unpredictability of driver reactions approaching intersections, and thus accidents. That is why the empirical data clearly show more accidents due to such cameras.

http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/01rlcdt-docs.pdf

Page 5.

Note some of the criteria:

Yellows < 4 seconds.
Downhill approaches.
Speeding traffic. (Yellows are calibrated based on the limit, not on what drivers do. Thus this is another way of saying short yellows.)


http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/46/4665.asp

Lengthen the yellow, violations go way down and the cameras lose money.


http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/47/4767.asp

And the guy who devised the original formula for yellow lights is saying things are going wrong.

(And he's describing the only red light ticket I've ever gotten: 45 mph road, I was turning left. I had an empty turn lane and an old green arrow as I approached. Knowing the arrow was old I kept my speed as long as I could and then braked reasonably hard as I got close--and the light cycled yellow and then red during that time. I was already braking on the green--there was no possible way out of the situation. At the time it went yellow I was past the point I could stop, I could easily have made it if I kept going--but that would leave me with no safe place to go. The only way of avoiding an accident would be to zig into the regular lane--which was already red.)

 

[Bronzeage]

Traffic cams will never be revenue generators, though some may see that as their only purpose. The actual purpose of a traffic cam is to remove the feeling of immunity from consequences many drivers feel, as they sail through a caution light which will turn red while they are still in the intersection.

In practice cameras only stay at intersections where they are revenue generators.

I'm sure there must be some balance between suppressing revenue and suppressing traffically criminal behavior. It wouldn't make any sense to leave a camera in a place where very few people are prone to running the light.

On the other hand, if the rate of accidents dropped at the same time the camera was installed, it would be a false economy to pull it.

The street that runs in front of my store is a four lane(no medium) major thoroughfare with a speed limit of 45mph. This is a busy retail and commercial district, so there may be 4 or 5 parking lot entrances on any block. There is a plan to remodel the street. The people who do these things are going to make it two lanes, with a center turn lane, and bike lanes on the curb. The speed limit will drop to 35mph.

You can imagine the squalling when this plan was announced. A lot of people have declared it to be a treehugger fantasy and say it will never be done. Although the road runs through the center of the city, it is a state highway.

My sister happens to be a Civil Engineer and has some authority over this kind of thing. In her words, "Oh, it's going to happen. There's no way out of it."

It turns out, the state highway department keeps statistics on all the roads under their care. This road has an accident rate so high, it's on a hit list. When injury and property damage rates exceed some arbitrary number, they are required to find out why the road is so hazardous, and remediate the problem. In this case, it means eliminating the need to turn left across two lanes of traffic, and make the cars slow down.

Intersections where traffic cams are installed receive the same scrutiny. Even though it's easy to see why some people think it's government sponsored larceny, they are really just trying to keep us healthy.

 

[bilby]

Seems like there's a few cities in the US that need to reprogram their traffic lights.

Either that or you're all full of shit.

I suspect that a big part of the problem for the US and her residents is the insane level of fragmentation of authority - it's bad enough that we have six state and two mainland territory governments, each with their own subtle variations in regulations about the positioning, timing and rules for traffic signals; in the US, there are hundreds of different sets of rules, and hundreds of tiny jurisdictions that are funded largely by traffic tickets. It's a recipe for disaster, and it's not surprising that some authorities abuse their powers, leading to a general undermining of confidence in the motives of them all.

There are some things that really need to be left to a central authority, and the very nature of transportation and highways makes it insane to have more than a handful of different authorities in control of a single day's driving.

Drive 1,000km from Brisbane to Sydney, and you encounter two jurisdictions, one of which covers 90% of the trip. I seriously doubt that there are many trips of similar distance in the USA that have such uniformity of regulation.

 

[bilby]

if a driver cannot stop without rear-ending the car in front that stops on yellow, then he also couldn't stop before rear-ending the car in front that stops on green, because a child ran out in front of him as he approached the intersection.

Such drivers should have their licence revoked as soon as possible, before they kill someone; they should not be allowed to be so numerous as to need the protection of changes to regulations aimed at their unlawful and incompetent behaviour.

I reserve the right to brake hard without warning at any time, should it be necessary to save a person's life.

 

[Bronzeage]

Seems like there's a few cities in the US that need to reprogram their traffic lights.

Either that or you're all full of shit.

I suspect that a big part of the problem for the US and her residents is the insane level of fragmentation of authority - it's bad enough that we have six state and two mainland territory governments, each with their own subtle variations in regulations about the positioning, timing and rules for traffic signals; in the US, there are hundreds of different sets of rules, and hundreds of tiny jurisdictions that are funded largely by traffic tickets. It's a recipe for disaster, and it's not surprising that some authorities abuse their powers, leading to a general undermining of confidence in the motives of them all.

There are some things that really need to be left to a central authority, and the very nature of transportation and highways makes it insane to have more than a handful of different authorities in control of a single day's driving.

Drive 1,000km from Brisbane to Sydney, and you encounter two jurisdictions, one of which covers 90% of the trip. I seriously doubt that there are many trips of similar distance in the USA that have such uniformity of regulation.

It's not as bad as all that. Traffic laws are generally uniform across the nation, even if enforcement is not. The rules for traffic light placement and management are controlled by the engineers of the highway department(state and federal), not law enforcement agencies. There is not a great deal of variation. A person who still has most of their wits about them could drive from Interstate Highway 10 from Jacksonville, Florida to Santa Monica, California(3,959km) and find, except for variations in the speed limit, it's all the same.

In my state, it is illegal for a police officer to receive any commission or bonus, based on writing tickets or arrests.

The real problem in America is not the roads or the rules. It's the drivers. For an American, a car represents true freedom and liberty, and we are taught from an early age that freedom and liberty a a big deal. We resist anything which seems to infringe upon our operation of a motor vehicle. When we are in our car, it arouses our inner anarchist/plutocrat and suddenly become strangely aggressive. We will yell at full volume if another driver gets too close. It's very important to get ahead of the car in front of us. There's no particular reason for this. It just is.

Traffic cams are an infringement on our automotive liberty. Even though we might not take the chance to push through a yellow light, we don't like the fact that it suddenly became more likely we will be caught.

If there is a flaw in the traffic camera system, it's the fact that the camera cannot check the driver's ID. The registered owner of the car is responsible for the ticket. Sometimes, the owner is the driver and sometimes he is not. In my city, city vehicles, with their public licence plates have racked up quite a few unpaid cam tickets. Who's going to pay that?

 

[bilby]

I suspect that a big part of the problem for the US and her residents is the insane level of fragmentation of authority - it's bad enough that we have six state and two mainland territory governments, each with their own subtle variations in regulations about the positioning, timing and rules for traffic signals; in the US, there are hundreds of different sets of rules, and hundreds of tiny jurisdictions that are funded largely by traffic tickets. It's a recipe for disaster, and it's not surprising that some authorities abuse their powers, leading to a general undermining of confidence in the motives of them all.

There are some things that really need to be left to a central authority, and the very nature of transportation and highways makes it insane to have more than a handful of different authorities in control of a single day's driving.

Drive 1,000km from Brisbane to Sydney, and you encounter two jurisdictions, one of which covers 90% of the trip. I seriously doubt that there are many trips of similar distance in the USA that have such uniformity of regulation.

It's not as bad as all that. Traffic laws are generally uniform across the nation, even if enforcement is not. The rules for traffic light placement and management are controlled by the engineers of the highway department(state and federal), not law enforcement agencies. There is not a great deal of variation. A person who still has most of their wits about them could drive from Interstate Highway 10 from Jacksonville, Florida to Santa Monica, California(3,959km) and find, except for variations in the speed limit, it's all the same.

In my state, it is illegal for a police officer to receive any commission or bonus, based on writing tickets or arrests.

The real problem in America is not the roads or the rules. It's the drivers. For an American, a car represents true freedom and liberty, and we are taught from an early age that freedom and liberty a a big deal. We resist anything which seems to infringe upon our operation of a motor vehicle. When we are in our car, it arouses our inner anarchist/plutocrat and suddenly become strangely aggressive. We will yell at full volume if another driver gets too close. It's very important to get ahead of the car in front of us. There's no particular reason for this. It just is.

Traffic cams are an infringement on our automotive liberty. Even though we might not take the chance to push through a yellow light, we don't like the fact that it suddenly became more likely we will be caught.

If there is a flaw in the traffic camera system, it's the fact that the camera cannot check the driver's ID. The registered owner of the car is responsible for the ticket. Sometimes, the owner is the driver and sometimes he is not. In my city, city vehicles, with their public licence plates have racked up quite a few unpaid cam tickets. Who's going to pay that?

Over here, the registered owner gets a penalty notice, which includes a choice of two statutory declarations; He can declare that he was the driver, and accepts the penalty, or that he was not, in which case he must identify the driver who was responsible. Companies and organisations which own cars are required to keep a register of who is driving each vehicle at any given time; failure to keep adequate records attracts a larger fine than the traffic notice, and making a false statutory declaration is a criminal offence.

This system has not completely eliminated frauds, such as wives taking the rap for husbands who would lose their licence due to accumulated demerits; but it seems to be adequate.

Your constitutional right not incriminate yourself or your spouse probably means that such rules would not be an option in the US, but our history as a prison colony serves us well when it comes to limiting our freedom to lie or cheat.

 

[fast]

I'd just like to take this time to inform everyone (like I've done several times over the years) that I am the hottest thing to hit the highways since the advent of the yellow lines.

 

[ronburgundy]

if a driver cannot stop without rear-ending the car in front that stops on yellow, then he also couldn't stop before rear-ending the car in front that stops on green, because a child ran out in front of him as he approached the intersection.

Such drivers should have their licence revoked as soon as possible, before they kill someone;

That would include you, every driver you know, and 99% of all drivers. Next time you are driving, see how often you and every other driver are less than 130 feet from the car in front of you (or 250 feet if on the hwy at 60mph).

 

[ronburgundy]

I have looked up the law. Danish traffic law makes it abundantly clear that yellow light means stop, just as much as red light, with the exception that you may pass if you are so close that it is unsafe to stop. I am quite sure it means the same in most other places. Please, look up the law where it applies to you, and tell me what it says. It definitely is not meant as a warning that red light is gonna come soon.

I think we already agree on the part, that if it is unsafe to stop then you shouldn't.

IOW, red and yellow don't at all mean the same thing, because "unsafe to stop" occurs for at least 1 car on nearly ever yellow light at on even moderately busy roads.
Almost anytime you are less than 100 feet from the intersection when the light turns yellow, it is unsafe to stop, and far less safe than than to continue which will get you through the yellow in less than the 3 seconds it takes for it to turn green. In contrast, if a light turns red when you are 100 feet from the intersection, than you must stop even it it means slamming on your brakes because it is near certain that the cross traffic will be in the intersection by the time you reach it.

Yellow lights are universally warnings that your right of way is about to end, thus you need to respond in whatever way is safer (which is very often to continue). Red light universally means your right of way is over and you must stop no matter how close you are, because continuing is by far the more dangerous option.

Braking on yellow is a violation of the rules, anytime it is safer to continue, which means anytime you are less than 130 feet at 35 mph (or less than 85 feet at 25 mph) when it turns yellow. That situation occurs during almost every single yellow light at busy intersections. Thus, is it objectively less safe and a violation of the rules not to continue on yellow hundreds of times every day at busy intersections. A camera makes people biased toward stopping it those unsafe situations, and the evidence from accident rates shows that they trigger far more accident causing decisions to brake when it is unsafe than they trigger people to brake when it is safer to do so.

So the fines are given to people running yellow lights or what?

Sometimes, yes. Sometimes the cameras are calibrated to be err on the side of giving a ticket, which means even if the driver was completely in the intersection while it was yellow, if their back bumper hasn't cleared when it turns red but before cross traffic turns green, they get a ticket. Note that it is legal in most states in the US to still be in the intersection when the light turns red, so long as you fully entered it on yellow. Private companies are often in charge of the equipment and get a % of the fines, so they have a bias in rigging the system knowing that most people will just pay it rather than fight it. Their have been cases where they intentionally shorten the yellow light below what the regulations state in order to increase tickets. It is the same as for meters and parking tickets. They will give tickets even when meters are broken, knowing that most people will just pay and not fight it because that costs them as much as paying. Just last week, I went to a hearing and got out of a parking ticket for which I had took a pic of the broken meter and called it in. The ticket writer gave all 8-10 cars on that block a ticket even though the meter for that block was clearly broken. I fought it on principle and because I could take the afternoon off to go. But there is zero consequence to anyone for writing bogus tickets or for wrongfully calibrating cameras.

People are aware of the purely money grabbing non-safety motives behind red-light cameras, so some get nervous and paranoid about going through a yellow even when it is clearly completely legal and safest to do so. So, even if just a small % of cameras are improperly calibrated, some drivers will err on the side of avoiding a chance of a ticket, which is often erring against what is objectively safest or legal. Avoiding a ticket is not the same as avoiding an accident. Cameras add a variable to the split second decision that is not the same as the variable of safety, and thus inherently make the decision less optimal in maximizing safety outcomes.

If they were actually concerned about safety, they would make the yellow lights a uniform well publicized length of time. Or even better, instead of very expensive cameras, install yellow lights that are a flashing # showing the seconds until it turns red, and make the law clear that you must be entering the intersection before it flashes "1" or something like that. They don't do that because it doesn't raise # and that rather than safety is the sole motive behind the cameras.

 

[ronburgundy]

There is nothing wrong with the traffic light programming. The problem is that the cameras impact decision making in a way that pits fear of getting a ticket against doing what is safest. The whole reason for yellow lights is NOT to tell people to brake, but to provide a warning that the light will turn red in a few seconds and they should begin to brake if they more than a few seconds from the intersection, but continue through if they can easily clear the intersection in that time, especially when their is traffic behind them. When you add a camera (especially when all drivers know they are designed to extort whenever possible), some people get paranoid and brake as soon as they see yellow, even when they would easily clear the intersection before the red. But other people will not overreact this way and go through the intersection when it makes sense to do so. Thus, the cameras greatly increase the unpredictability of driver reactions approaching intersections, and thus accidents. That is why the empirical data clearly show more accidents due to such cameras.

http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/01rlcdt-docs.pdf

Page 5.

Note some of the criteria:

Yellows < 4 seconds.
Downhill approaches.
Speeding traffic. (Yellows are calibrated based on the limit, not on what drivers do. Thus this is another way of saying short yellows.)


http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/46/4665.asp

Lengthen the yellow, violations go way down and the cameras lose money.


http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/47/4767.asp

And the guy who devised the original formula for yellow lights is saying things are going wrong.

(And he's describing the only red light ticket I've ever gotten: 45 mph road, I was turning left. I had an empty turn lane and an old green arrow as I approached. Knowing the arrow was old I kept my speed as long as I could and then braked reasonably hard as I got close--and the light cycled yellow and then red during that time. I was already braking on the green--there was no possible way out of the situation. At the time it went yellow I was past the point I could stop, I could easily have made it if I kept going--but that would leave me with no safe place to go. The only way of avoiding an accident would be to zig into the regular lane--which was already red.)

True, there are light programming problems that lead to confusion, accidents, and bullshit tickets. I was discounting the claim that people rear-ending drivers who unsafely stop on yellow to avoid a ticket was purely caused by traffic light timing issues. It is caused by the presence of the camera. If there is a camera giving tickets, you will inherently have some people unsafely stopping on yellow lights of any length, regardless of any additional problems caused by light programming/timing issues.
Cameras make avoiding a ticket rather than safety the primary concern for some drivers.

 

[ronburgundy]

Accidents are not caused by people going through yellow lights. But accidents can be caused by people slamming on brakes to avoid light turning red for a fraction of a second.
Accidents involving red light running happen when somebody runs a red light when the cross-traffic is already green. If red light cameras were calibrated to catch those offenders (much more rare, and thus ineffective to raise revenue) rather than catch regular drivers on a technicality they'd be much more popular.


Yet cities do it for revenue. That should tell you all about their effectiveness. As far as body shops, they can do brisk business on rear end collisions as well.

As with most laws, the root intention is too protect the majority of the population from the small fraction who thinks their needs supersede those of their neighbors. There will always be some anti-social types who see traffic signals and signs as impediments to their daily life and which can be disregarded when there is little perceived chance of being caught. Since there are so many traffic lights and so few policemen, the odds are always in their favor.

But red light cameras are calibrated such that they ensnare many of the "majority of the population", and not just the "small fraction" of red light runners. That's the problem. It could be solved by increasing the time between light going red and cameras being active to say 1 second.

If we can all agree that failing to stop when a traffic light is red is a bad thing, not a sometimes bad thing, this discussion would make a lot more sense.

If a caution light is visible to a driver, they are obligated to stop.

Wrong. It is illegal to stop on yellow, if you cannot do it safely, which means almost anytime you are less than 100 feet from the intersection when it turns yellow.

Accidents are caused by people who run yellow lights.

Wrong again. The empirical evidence shows that many accidents are caused by drivers who brake at yellow lights when it is unsafe to so, and that red-light cameras cause an increase in the frequency of drivers engaging in such unsafe stops that violate the laws associated with yellow lights.

Please tell me how your "illegal to stop on yellow" statute is enforced.

Whether an action can be easily prosecuted is irrelevant to whether it violates the law, and more importantly whether it violates principles that increase safety.

If a person approaching an intersection stops because they see the light turn yellow, and are then struck by a vehicle from behind, it would seem the second driver was following too close and failed to leave a sufficient distance between his vehicle and the one ahead of him.

A driver following more than 10 car lengths behind would still often hit a driver who slammed their brakes when the light turned yellow, even if they noticed the car was stopping and reacted in a reasonable amount of time. There is no plausible distance that is "safe" when a person engages in such a behavior. On no busy highway or street anywhere in the world are cars reliably spaced even half the distance needed. Just imagine what all cars being 100 + feet apart on every road would look like and entail. It is a world of pure fiction. The fact that the law automatically places blame on the car that rear-ended doesn't mean that driver in front did not break the law and do something inherently unsafe that was the primary and most avoidable cause of the accident. It is a purely pragmatic choice of simply making one party always responsible no matter the specific instance, because there would rarely be the evidence needed to decide who was responsible in most instances.

In the state of Louisiana, our laws which deal with yellow lights state that if the light turns yellow while it is in the driver's field of vision, the driver is obligated to stop.

That is false. This site describes basis driving laws in each state and says ....
"In Indiana it is not illegal to deliberately drive through a yellow light. A yellow light means only that traffic facing the light is “warned” that a red light will soon follow. As long as your vehicle entered the intersection or passed the crosswalk or limit line before the light turned red, you haven’t broken the law."

That is a good thing, because your made up rule would get lots of people killed. A yellow light is often visible to a driver already in the intersection. So, your rule means that you must slam on the brakes the moment any light turns yellow, no matter how close to or even in the intersection you are.
Nowhere has such a rule.

All of this reminds me of the debate in the 60's about seat belts. There was always someone ready to list all the reasons a seat belt would cause more harm than good, despite the advantages of not being thrown through a windshield during a collision. In the "Watch out for the guy behind you," school of traffic safety, drivers are expected to model their driving in such a way as to protect tailgaters. This is something I find quite strange.

Except in this case, the empirical data and rational analyses prove that stopping on yellow is very often unsafe and causes accidents, and that cameras cause more accidents due to this than they prevent accidents from people running red lights.
Also, every driver is a "tailgater" if that means they drive at distances that make it unsafe for the driver in front to slam on the brakes, which is the only way to stop on yellow if you are less than 100 feet and going 35mph or over. Not to mention such brake slamming required for all drivers to stop on yellow can also lead to the car sliding sideways into oncoming traffic or off the road, especially when the road is not dry or their tires less than brand new and high quality. So, it isn't about childish blame game and self-righteous finger pointing. It is about public safety and what methods make all drivers safer. All the evidence shows that continuing through a yellow is very often the safest, and that cameras undermine this optimal choice and thus cause additional accidents that harm the driver who stops as or more as the driver who rear-ends them.

I did not mention Indiana in my post, which was strictly about Louisiana, where the traffic code is quite clear on the matter. In this state, a yellow light is a command to stop, not a warning that time to cross the intersection is limited.

Weird. I must have saw the "iana" and thought "Indiana" when I googled the law. But it turns out that the same site has info on every state, and it is the same in Louisiana
"In Louisiana it is not illegal to deliberately drive through a yellow light. A yellow light means only that traffic facing the light is “warned” that a red light will soon follow. As long as your vehicle entered the intersection or passed the crosswalk or limit line before the light turned red, you haven’t broken the law."

Besides, even if your states legislators were dumb enough and had so little regard for public safety as to have a "must stop on yellow" law, that wouldn't matter to the fact that all evidence and reason says that it is safer to sometimes not stop on yellow and that almost all other places have laws that recognize this fact.

In fact, here is are the conclusions in a detailed report by the largest scientific organization dealing with transportation engineering issues, who applie the same physics and math I referred to in my arguments (rather than your emotion and ideology) to the question of the safety of stopping on yellow lights.

At the termination of a green phase, motorists approaching a signalize intersection areadvised by a yellow signal indication that the red interval is about to commence.35
The speed and location of some approaching vehicles will be such that they can stop safely at the stop line; others will have to continue at their speed or even accelerate into or through the intersection.


Any law that goes against this science is causing harm for the sake of profit. Fortunately, unlike red-light cameras, most basic laws about yellow lights do largely follow this principle.

DMV.org also recognizes the potential unsafeness of stopping on yellow and the need to continue through the light:
"Steady yellow lights signal that the light will turn red soon. So, you must either come to a safe stop before the crosswalk, or, if you can’t stop safely, proceed with caution through the intersection before the light turns red."

 

[bilby]

if a driver cannot stop without rear-ending the car in front that stops on yellow, then he also couldn't stop before rear-ending the car in front that stops on green, because a child ran out in front of him as he approached the intersection.

Such drivers should have their licence revoked as soon as possible, before they kill someone;

That would include you, every driver you know, and 99% of all drivers. Next time you are driving, see how often you and every other driver are less than 130 feet from the car in front of you (or 250 feet if on the hwy at 60mph).

They don't suspend the laws of physics in favour of traffic regulations you know.

It's not necessary to have a gap as large as the stopping distance, because the car you are following has to stop too. Unless it hits a brick wall unexpectedly built across the highway

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In practice cameras only stay at intersections where they are revenue generators.

I'm sure there must be some balance between suppressing revenue and suppressing traffically criminal behavior. It wouldn't make any sense to leave a camera in a place where very few people are prone to running the light.

On the other hand, if the rate of accidents dropped at the same time the camera was installed, it would be a false economy to pull it.

The street that runs in front of my store is a four lane(no medium) major thoroughfare with a speed limit of 45mph. This is a busy retail and commercial district, so there may be 4 or 5 parking lot entrances on any block. There is a plan to remodel the street. The people who do these things are going to make it two lanes, with a center turn lane, and bike lanes on the curb. The speed limit will drop to 35mph.

You can imagine the squalling when this plan was announced. A lot of people have declared it to be a treehugger fantasy and say it will never be done. Although the road runs through the center of the city, it is a state highway.

My sister happens to be a Civil Engineer and has some authority over this kind of thing. In her words, "Oh, it's going to happen. There's no way out of it."

It turns out, the state highway department keeps statistics on all the roads under their care. This road has an accident rate so high, it's on a hit list. When injury and property damage rates exceed some arbitrary number, they are required to find out why the road is so hazardous, and remediate the problem. In this case, it means eliminating the need to turn left across two lanes of traffic, and make the cars slow down.

Intersections where traffic cams are installed receive the same scrutiny. Even though it's easy to see why some people think it's government sponsored larceny, they are really just trying to keep us healthy.

The problem here is that you're doing a bunch of things which aren't necessarily of value.

Median with turn lanes => very good idea. If there is the traffic flow for 2 lanes each way the forcing drivers to turn from a traffic lane will snarl traffic and cause accidents.

Bike lanes => without knowing the surround I can't be sure but probably a very bad idea. The only place I see people making any real use of bike lanes is when there's a complete path of bike lanes for their trip.

45 to 35 => generally a bad idea. Drivers know that speed limits are very often not based on reality. You get very poor compliance when you arbitrarily lower the speed limit, this makes things worse by increasing the speed variability of the traffic.