Red Light Cameras
I read the proposal for red light cameras in our community and I want to bring a slightly different perspective to this issue.Nationally, according to government statistics, there are 900 fatalities (round numbers) attributed to red light violations. These typically involve crashes with emergency vehicles, police chases, distracted drivers, and drivers who completely miss seeing the traffic light, or are confused by an array of conflicting traffic signals. People who are entering the intersection within one or two seconds of the light change are not the usual culprits in these fatal crashes. Red light cameras address only this last type of violation.
The vast majority of motorists do not willingly violate red lights. The predominate causes of red light violations are improper design and location of traffic lights, inadequate maintenance of traffic lights, and incompetent operation of traffic lights. If these causes are properly addressed red light violations virtually disappear.
In the past, some cities shortened yellow lights to increase violation rates, and thus income. What isn’t commonly known is that yellow light intervals were already too short as the result of a misguided 20 year national effort to improve or maintain intersection traffic volumes while introducing "all-way" red intervals. In error, yellow light intervals were shortened and as a result red light violations increased. Other policy errors, such as using speed limits instead of actual approach speeds to determine the length of yellow lights further exaggerated the problem.
There are examples (and you can find many on the web site www.motorists.org) where adding a second or two to yellow light times literally eliminated red light violations at heretofore dangerous intersections. A Texas A&M study found that no other single measure compared to increasing yellow light interval times when it came to reducing red light violations. And, the improvement is permanent and not temporary.
Other measures that have great value include timing and coordinating of traffic lights to optimize traffic flow and eliminate interruptions that cause accidents, fuel wastage, time loss, and higher emissions. That's a lot of benefits for a fairly modest investment. Placing warning lights in advance of high speed intersections that alert approaching motorists of a light change will prevent those moments of indecision that result in brakes being slammed on, or the accelerator pushed to the floor to "make" a suddenly changed light. Improving the visibility of traffic lights and reducing visual clutter that detracts from that visibility can prevent the more dangerous situations where drivers completely miss seeing a light and drive directly into crossing traffic.
The incredibly perverse nature of red light cameras is that local governments that could readily and significantly improve intersection safety using known, proven, and relatively inexpensive engineering strategies don’t do so. Instead they turn a blind eye to these extremely beneficial strategies and install ticket cameras that reap the ill-gotten income that comes from traffic violations caused by improperly installed, inadequately maintained and incompetently operated traffic lights.
I'm confident that the promotion of ticket cameras is not about safety, it’s really about raising easy money, even if the health, lives, and property of citizens are put in jeopardy in the process.
