Filed under: Trends, Safety, First Drive
Irony: Red light cameras a safety impediment
Red light cameras are nothing more than a surreptitious tax. Oh sure, they're sold to municipalities as a safety benefit, but what else would you say if you wanted to be paid to install, administrate, and monitor your little ticket-writing bots? The cities and towns that put the cameras greedily snap up the extra revenue generated by dangerously short yellow lights and overzealous cameras. Patrick Bedard has been poking holes in the theory that traffic cameras are the salve for behind the wheel idiocy, and a recent study by the University of South Florida Public Health agrees that the cameras actually cause accidents. Other studies also back up the findings that drivers are quicker to slam on their brakes at yellow lights when they spot the cameras. While it should not play out with a rear ending, nobody maintains a safe following distance, or even pays attention. In some cases, the rate of red light running is low enough that the cameras cause a spike in incidents, proving that the cure can sometimes be worse than the sickness.
[Source: Kicking Tires, Photo: Morning Chu Hi]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
SOhp101 10:11AM (3/14/2008)
Ain't this the truth.
I live near a very busy intersection in Los Angeles which has a speed camera--9 times out of 10 an accident occurs here because someone slams on their brakes after seeing the cameras.
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Yar 10:18AM (3/14/2008)
I find this especially true since I tend to tow quite often. People need to realize that everyone behind them may not have the same stopping ability as they do, so be sure to check your rear-view mirror before smoking the tires at a yellow light.
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Jackattak 10:54AM (3/14/2008)
Asinine. If you have an irregular stopping distance in the vehicle you're driving, you need to adjust accordingly and NOT EXPECT everyone around you to realize your deficiency.
Can I get a dose of personal accountability for my country please? Thanks.
Yar 11:20AM (3/14/2008)
You obviously don't drive in the city often. When was the last time you left a huge space in front of your vehicle and didn't have some retard swoop in front of you? I can try to leave all the space in the world in front of me, but when you get to an intersection no space is left unfilled.
Jackattak 11:27AM (3/14/2008)
I live in the inner-city of Portland, OR.
Allen 11:51AM (3/14/2008)
sorry to herar that Jackattak... LOL
I'm in the REAL inner city of NYC - dammit I'd rather have a stalling engine than bad brakes.
Derek 1:30PM (3/14/2008)
Yar, I certainly understand the problems maintaining a safe following distance, but are you saying that your tow vehicle has such bad brakes that you would have to run the red because you can't stop fast enough? Perhaps a slower driving speed is in order?
BigASS Impala SS 10:22AM (3/14/2008)
Money makers is ALL they are! For insurance and for the police plus lets not forget the owner of the cameras.
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xspeedy 10:22AM (3/14/2008)
Car & Driver has lots of good articles on this. Once the cameras are in, the municipalities will shorten the yellow lights to juice up revenues. This creates more accidents and so forth.
The same logic applies to speed traps and greedy officers - people are so busy watching out for speed traps that they are distracted from driving. I don't think speeding really kills. I think that distractions kill.
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jgp 10:46AM (3/14/2008)
Here's a good solution: pass a federal law stating that any money taken from people due to traffic fines is to be removed from the money supply and not given to local or state governments.
It solves the corruption problem and the inflation problem!
Dan 12:41PM (3/14/2008)
jgp, that's exactly right.
Making traffic enforcement a source of revenue shifts the focus from catching the most dangerous drivers to catching the most drivers.
Enforcement should be solely via points towards drivers ed classes and eventual license revocation. Zero money involved, zero incentive to write millions of garbage tickets like they do now.
Jim in Tampa 10:24AM (3/14/2008)
The very week this study came out, Hillsborough County (home of the University of South Florida) voted to install cameras at intersections.
Do you think they will reconsider? Nope. Because Hillsborough County would lose a potential source of revenue if they implemented the ideas put out by our very own university.
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havoc 12:01PM (3/14/2008)
Oh man, i'm glad i left Tampa!
I have also read some of the articles from Car and Driver... interesting tricks they will play with shortening the yellow light length by a mere tenth or 2 of a second, and it increases the number of offenders. We have several of them here in SF, but then again as soon as the light goes red (yellows are about 4 secs from start to finish), the other side is green (unlike in Tampa where the yellow lights last about 7 seconds AND there is around a 2 second delay before cross traffic gets their green).
Many of the lights here are specifically timed to impede traffic. Typically unless you are in the direction of majority, AND travelling about 2 mph under the speed limit, then you will go red light to red light. this allows the cars that have backed up the block to clear out, but keeps you from being able to keep a good pace.
I have yet to get captured on camera, but i have seen people lock their brakes up trying to stop when they see a camera sign, only to end up blocking the crosswalk and a lane of travel.
Corey W 10:27AM (3/14/2008)
Although, I hate the cameras, claiming they cause more accidents is retarded. No offense, people should have learned in drivers training, when you see yellow that means prepare to stop. Also, the cameras should start capturing after the light turns red, not yellow, save time and money on someone having to review the video and make a judgment call on how far into the intersection/yellow the car was. This should be for people blatantly running a red light, not some caught in the middle of an intersection on the beginning of a yellow.
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A.N.E. 10:36AM (3/14/2008)
While I agree with your argument in principle, the majority of real world citizens are not as smart as you are. The camera is a poor idea from a practical perspective.
DKB_SATX 10:59AM (3/14/2008)
A case could be made that it's retarded to claiming that something is retarded without looking at any of the research. The problem frequently isn't the camera itself, but the fact that the companies that run these scams...er... systems often have control of the entire intersection (the camera ties into the control of the traffic light) and often shorten the yellow on the camera-monitored intersections. Independent studies of accident data at camera-monitored intersections have shown that this has often led to an increase in the total number of accidents, especially when the yellow is shortened compared to other intersections in the city.
An argument can be made that the real culprit is the shortened yellow, but the ONLY reason to shorten the yellow is to enhance revenue from the camera, so it's defensible to say that these cameras are the cause. In some of the egregious cases, the yellows were shortened to something like half the recommended length.
epilonious 11:04AM (3/14/2008)
The basic wisdom is this:
Studies have shown that increasing the length of the yellow light by about a second greatly greatly GREATLY decreases collisions in intersections that have had a consistent problem.
Studies (as posted here) show that putting up red-light cameras greatly increase the amount of "oh shnap, I need to slam on the brakes" rear end collisions, and don't really reduce the incidents where some jackass runs the light and t-bones people who just started moving into the intersection.
Furthermore, since the cameras have been seen as cash registers by lots of small towns, governments are putting them up in lots of areas that don't really need them... most of the revenue comes from people running the left turn light (which they often shorten just to be greedy)
My prediction is that the cameras will die off as soon as The General American Populace gets a hold of this data and starts suing municipalities that use the cameras. Frankly, taking the cash back from the government seems like the perfect way to fill that gap left by a poorly insured motorist plowing into the back of your car going 38 MPH.
Corey W. 11:55AM (3/14/2008)
DKB_SATX,
A case could also be made that if more people took driving seriously, and followed the basic rules they needed to pass the d*mn exam, maybe it wouldn't matter if there were cameras at the intersection or not. Oh, that means taking responsibility, but I'm sure that seems retarded to you also.... How about you do some comparative research and compare, the accident and deaths, caused by people blowing red lights, to the people not paying attention and breaking short cause they're afraid of a camera.
DKB_SATX 12:20PM (3/14/2008)
You are now making a different statement than you made before. Initially you were talking about number of accidents, now you're talking about injuries/severity of accidents. That doesn't make your first statement any more correct.
It is true that the yellow light should signal people to prepare to stop. The problem is that there's a narrow range of timing that's ideal for a given speed of traffic, and that's been established by the study of traffic flow over years. Good planners set the length of the yellow to this recommended length and that reduces collisions.
Municipalities and red-light-camera companies have in many cases shortened this yellow significantly below the recommended length to generate more revenue, and this leads to more accidents as well.
The goal should be a reduction in ALL accidents. A cheap, proven way to do this is to set the ideal length of the yellow. I have no problem with enforcing traffic laws at intersections if it's done properly, but shortening the yellow (thus creating a situation in which more people are likely to run the light) in order to enhance revenues is neither appropriate enforcement nor good safety planning.
Kaptain75329 1:06PM (3/14/2008)
That's all very well and good, but you're essentially arguing for fairness in an unfair world. Couple of problems with your post:
- What driver education? I have never seen a formal education on the subject that even remotely addresses basics about handling dynamics and emergency maneuvers. If you can pass a vision test requiring less skill than browsing the internet, you can get a license. People are never taught how to drive correctly in the first place which is why we have to witness the circus of acrobatic motoring bullshit with dulling regularity on our daily commutes.
- There are plenty of people on the roads who shouldn't be there, and I'm not just talking about idiots; that's a given. I'm talking about illegal immigrants and illiterates who can't read English or even any language. In my area, this isn't a small concern - when illegal immigrants took a day off from their jobs to make a point in protest, there was still plenty of traffic around, but to see my commute time cut in almost half despite the remaining traffic was an eye-opener to put it mildly.
- Government's purpose here isn't actually about solving the problem with red light running. In the vast majority of cases, the problem of red light running isn't serious enough to warrant the cost of deploying cameras. Government spends that money because it believes it will get a greater return out of said investment.
This isn't about public safety or good driving habits. If it was, then why reduce the yellow light time? Washington DC got busted for that big time last year, changing the yellow light time to 3 seconds instead of normal 5 at any light that doesn't have the cams.
There's actual facts to prove the consequences of these stupid light cams, and they're not helping anyone except government.
At the end of the day it doesn't really matter. People can complain all they want - these crooks know that the great unwashed masses won't vote in high enough numbers to make a difference. I mean hey, there's more important things to worry about: American Idol is on TV tonight.