Should Red Light Camera Intersections be cleary marked by large signs?

That can be a very tricky statistic to get correct. Quite a few have been killed when the rear ended car got bumped into oncoming high speed traffic. The killed part is attributed to the high speed collision, not the initial push.

 

That data is in the pdf's of the studies on the second link. The Ontario study in 2003 says exactly what you are saying, collisions and property damage went up, but fatalities had a sight but significant decline. Later studies in Virgina and NC had increased fatalities up at red light camera intersections. The numbers are so small that little things like seat belt use could drastically alter the results. I would not say the studies prove or disprove your statement.

http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2008/fl-orban.pdf
Since the above study talks about most of the other ones its probably the best to read first. While the evidence is inconclusive on red light cameras reducing fatalities, there are clear ways to reduce red light injuries and fatalities that FHWA and NTHSA recommend

"
size or adding signal heads where one signalhead is used for multiple lanes and may be
blocked from view.
• Address east-west roads where sun angles
silhouette the traffic sign head and add back
plates to enhance visibility.
• Set appropriate yellow light time intervals that
allow vehicles to clear the intersection or safely
stop that is consistent with the speed limit, road
grade and intersection width.
• Add a brief all-red light clearance interval to
allow traffic in the intersection to clear prior to
releasing cross traffic.
• Add intersection warning signs or advanced
yellow flashing lights or reduce the approach
speed to the intersection.
• Coordinate traffic signals to optimize traffic
flow, eliminating interruptions.
• Remove on-site parking near intersections to
increase visibility of pedestrians and cross
traffic.
• Repair malfunctioning lights and avoid
unnecessarily long cycle timings."

Texdot has a similar list and have reduced injuries and fatalities by over 50% where implemented. It is interesting that when the city of San Diago was sued on its red light program, court documents showed that lights were selected based mainly on violating these rules.

 

Anybody want another example of idiotic inconsistencies of right wing political opinion?

The right wing has been very high on "privatizing" any and all aspects of government (government at every level!). So here we have a great example of privatization that costs the tax payer nothing, and returns a positive cash flow to the municipality. It is in essence a privatized police force that never takes a coffee break, works all night, and never asks for health care! Who could ask for more. Well in a shining example of people voting their own self interest, there are many movements a foot to either ban or severely limit their use in Washington State. The cry is that it "makes a profit" for the city and the company that provides the service? So when did making a profit become a dirty word to the right. The ultimate example of this hypocrisy is Tim Eyeman. Tim Eyeman who has been carrying the banner of anti tax, right wing initiatives in Washington State for ~10 years, to the point of hamstringing state and local governments in the process, is now submitting another initiative to ban red light cameras because "the city profits from them" So for ~10 years he has been after the state (and municipalities) to be more efficient, and now that they are,, he finds that offensive.

Just to clarify my own position, I think redlight cameras are bothersome, and I think it is a Chicken S+*T way of enforcing the law (like speeding cameras!) but if you don't run red lights, you are not going to get a ticket! From a tax payers point of view, it is a win/win.

This just is another proof that these right wing nuts are all about killing government, not making it more efficient. (until, like Bobby Jindal they need the service that only government can provide!)

 

By "inconclusive", I assume you mean "definitely proven".

 

This type of accident doesn't apply to this thread. If a slowing car gets pushed into crossing traffic, then that car would also have been hit if they drove through the intersection on the changing light.

If the hit car was sitting at the light for a bit before being rear ended, then the accident can't be blamed on a red light camera.

Tom

 

Not sure I understand your point. If this happened at a red light camera would it not be included in the statistics? Or that it should not, and be culled before the statistics are compiled?

 

I nearly became one of those high speed T-bone victims the very next day after the federal publicity, a few years back, of red light runners killing 800 people per year.

I stopped two-thirds of the way across the intersection, barely preventing a pickup truck from taking my nose off. Had he hit us, my wife would have certainly been killed -- this was the pre-SUV-era Honda, where the floor pan was half the side impact strength, but later safety-standard-exempt trucks and SUVs rode over the top of it and hit directly at the victim's head level -- and my condition wouldn't have been good.

Compared to that, a square rear-ender sounds like a very good trade.

 

Austingreen: Thank you for your apology on the racism remark. Apology accepted.

You make some good points about privacy and due process rights. But I also think you overlook the magnitude of the problem. Elsewhere in this thread the figure of 35,000 traffic deaths a year was cited. Imagine if there were seven terrorist attacks a year in the U.S., each as big as 9/11. Do you think we'd have any civil rights left at all? Yet people accept seven 9/11s worth of death on our highways every year and protest every attempt to reduce that number.

Just a little over a hundred years ago, cars did not exist, and since that time we've come to think that everyone who knows which is the go pedal and which is the stop pedal, and a few who don't, have a god-given right to drive a car, and do it while talking on the phone, eating a sloppy joe, drinking hot coffee, and applying makeup all at the same time. And woe to the city official who wants to watch for reckless driving with a camera because the citizens won't pay enough taxes to hire a few traffic cops.

I support, and even insist on due process when charges are laid. But I also support technological means of monitoring the roads, and taking away driving privileges from people who refuse to exercise caution when operating a vehicle. FWIW I also support much more stringent driving tests, repeated at reasonable intervals. My father became a very dangerous driver due to old age long before we (mostly my sister) finally convinced him to quit driving. The state would not require him to re-take his driving test, because that would be "age discrimination." (A solution would be to test everybody every few years.)

And as an aside, not relevant to this thread except that "driving while Mexican" was mentioned above, I support open borders, and have argued for open borders in other threads in the past. The present flap over immigration in Arizona is demagoguery at its worst. Especially since we stole the entire southwest from Mexico in the first place. And Mexican immigrants (whether documented or not) contribute far more to society than they take away.

Good one! The OP demonstrated less than serious intentions with the poll by the lose-lose choices offered.

 

I think red light cameras would tend to reduce that statistic. If there were consequences for a driver running the light, they might have some respect for traffic laws, and it would be safer for the pedestrian to cross the street.

 

Some people claim red light cameras are dangerous because drivers fearing tickets stop suddenly when the light begins to change. These sudden stops increase the likelihood of a rear end collision. Another poster questioned this by suggesting that rear end collisions are less dangerous than getting hit by cross traffic, which might happen if you run a red light. This argument was countered by the claim that a rear end collision could push a stopping car into cross traffic, where it would then be involved in a much more dangerous type of accident.

I made couple of comments relating to this entire line of argument:

1) People stopping at lights should not increase the incidence of rear end collisions. The fact that it does in some areas indicates that some drivers are inattentive, following too close, or anticipating that the leading car will run the red light. All of these are dangerous. As drivers adjust to actually stopping when a light turns yellow, other drivers will learn to stop running into the back of them. Either that, or they will be removed from the road. In time the increase in rear end collisions should diminish.

2) In regard to being pushed into crossing traffic, it makes no logical sense to blame red light cameras. Think of it like this: If crossing traffic is present and you run the light there will be a collision. If crossing traffic is present and you attempt to stop, but get pushed into the intersection there will be a collision. Attempting to stop at the light because of the red light camera does not create an increased risk of colliding with crossing traffic. Therefor it is erroneous to add any secondary crossing collision to the statistics against red light cameras.

Tom

 

Thanks for the fuller explanation. There was a subtle point to what I was thinking that is not all that different than part 2) of you comment. If we are going to use before/after statistics to determine if red light cameras work, should fatal accidents be included? You make a clear point that it is not the red light monitoring that causes this particular type of fatal accident. Agree. Are there possible fatal accidents that could be caused by red light monitoring? That's not clear to me.

As you can see by you very last sentence "...it is erroneous to add any secondary crossing collision to the statistics..." leads to the following question; Is this done for any of the statistics that would be presented here?....or do we just get raw statistics that does not make this distinction?

 

Ultimately, lights should be synced so you can cruise at a steady 40 mph (or some other speed) and hit the lights green.

What makes red light cameras so frustrating is the lights are unsynchronized and the yellow light is short.

Regardless of my speed, don't make me guess what I have to do to avoid a ticket.

 

I don't know about "right wingers", but I can't stand them because:

1. They ticket you for making legitimate, legal, and careful right hand turns on red lights.

2. You can't fight them in court, you just get angry letters from the police until you pay.

3. Thus this is a form of taxation, where a private company extorts money from motorists unjustly without due process, and then gives a portion of the proceeds to the local government. Oh so that makes it good all of the sudden?

I know some of you like these things, you know better than the rest of us, you're smarter than everyone else, etc. No offense, this is why I don't want to live near any of you, and I'm sure the feeling is mutual. Happily, they aren't legal in my state, and wont be anytime soon.

 

I learned back in drivers ed many years ago, that the law was, as long as you entered the intersection on the yellow, you were legal. What you couldn't do was enter on the red. There are plenty of cases where one enters the intersection, even on a green (no yellow yet) and traffic snarls for what ever reason, and you are stuck in the intersection when the light turns red.

Can anyone clarify (with citation and authority) on the subject, as opposed to what we "think we know"?

 

I have never heard of this.
When we had them in Minneapolis it was like any other ticket. You could fight it in court.
Where can you not fight them?

 

Texas for one, they are popping up all over the metroplex. Some cities [in the DFW metroplex] are issuing more fines per month than they have actual residents.

I stand with the ACLU on this, the answer should be NO red light cameras under any circumstances. Sadly nobody ever listens to the ACLU, when what they are fighting for is a more free society. That's okay, I'll remain a card-carrying member for all of us.

Edit: Clarified location.

 

Actually if you read the links, I mean there isn't enough information to really make the judgment. If you aggregate most of the research with good experimental design, adjust for other factors, intersections with red light cameras have slightly greater fatality rates than similar intersections with without cameras. I don't have any good narative to explain why the cameras would increase fatalities. Researchers have mentioned random variation and seat belt usage.

The Ontario study had 6.8% fewer fatalities with red light cameras than without them. The research team noted that other cities were reporting much greater reductions. The florida ream found no data or problems with the data in those other reports and reported these in their research. They did additional research comparing intersections with red light cameras and no extra police enforcement, and intersections with more police but no cameras. Both cases had advertisements talking about increased enforcement and the dangers of running red lights. The intersections with cameras but no additional police had an increase in fatalities of 2%, those with police and no cameras had 12% reduction in fatalities.

NHTSA reported in 2000 that the main factors in red light collisions are speeding, drunk driving, and inattentiveness. Seat belt use and airbags are key differentiators in severity of injuries. Most of the reports of huge increases in safety with red light cameras do not compare the effects of changes to the red light intersection as I reported above that address speeding and attentiveness. They also do not gauge the effects of other law enforcement programs that increase seat belt usage or decrease drunk driving or decrease speeding. These effects are handled in the good studies by comparing camera intersections to non camera intersections.

 

Often the data is not available. The best we can do is find correlations between accidents and the cameras. Correlation alone does not show causation. Several studies have reviewed police reports to help explain the data. These incidents where the car ahead slammed on the brakes when they saw yellow, creating a new hazard. The Florida study speculated the worst offenders still proceeded through the intersections camera or not. This is how they helped explain why red light cameras alone don't reduce fatalities. The evidence shows more accidents overall, with t-bones reduced, and rear end collisions increased. I haven't seen evidence of cars being pushed into the intersections causing fatalities, but they might just not be reported.

All the studies show that synchronized lights reduce red light running and accidents.

Your confusion is because their are two different laws. There are permissive intersections which allow you to enter the intersection on yellow but exit on red. There are also pervasive intersections where it is illegal to have any part of the car in the intersection during red. These vary by location.

 

I'm sorry that we got off on the wrong foot, and it was my fault.

I agree its a problem. I put out corrected figures to show that at least the numbers are headed in the right direction. I agree that progress is not fast enough. I don't think reduction of civil rights as a result of 9/11 made us safer either. I understand others feel differently.

I agree that technology can help. I am supportive of black boxes in new cars and even requirements that they be added to others after a phase in period. But these should be read only in accidents or when there evidence of reckless driving, in other words probable cause. I would not even mind if the devices reported truly reckless driving on their own, as long as there are provisions for for individual rights. I do object to such devices reporting minor speeding violations creating low hurdles and huge potential for government abuse. The technology is here to make red light running less of a problem. This is involved in making the intersections and lights easy to see, timed correctly with other lights and with vehicle speeds.

I was trying to read on follow ups to the Ontario study, and came across 7 pedestrian deaths in Toronto in January. There are 800 fatalities at red lights and 5000 non-motorists fatalities caused by collisions with vehicles a year in the united states. Two of the deaths were at stop lights. In one a 83 year old woman drove through a red light and killed a pedestrian crossing on walk. On the other a 80 year old man walking on red was killed by a car going through on green. Retesting might have prevented that first accident, I don't know of anything that would have prevented the second one.

When I was a little kid we used to count the people he almost hit. It was awful, and I can't believe my parents and aunts and uncles didn't stop him from driving. He finally stopped when I was 10, after he hit someone. Luckily no one was hurt. We do need to periodically give people at least a short vision and coordination test.

 

I would not expect red light cameras themselves to prevent accidents. What will reduce accidents would be to remove reckless drivers from the road. Red light cameras could be a tool towards that end: If you run red lights, or otherwise drive recklessly, you should not be allowed to drive a vehicle. Fines might encourage a few violators to be more cautious, but the effect will be limited. We need to take driving licenses away from these people.

And we have a perverted attitude toward speed limits. Legally, you are supposed to remain UNDER or AT the speed limit. But since the cops in most places won't ticket you until you are 5 mph over, everybody drives as though the limit were 5 mph over the legal speed limit.

I would encourage a paradigm shift, where you get a ticket for driving one mph over the limit, and if convicted you lose your license for a year. The speed limit is the MAXIMUM speed you're supposed to drive. The COMMON speed should be 5 mph UNDER the MAXIMUM limit, with those 5 mph as leeway since without cruise control it's hard to maintain an exact speed, and there are conditions where cruise control is unsafe because of slightly changing speeds around you.

As for traffic lights, here's what I was taught: Red means STOP. Yellow means STOP IF YOU CAN DO SO SAFELY because the red light is coming soon. Sadly, many drivers take yellow to mean "Speed up to get through before the red." That is reckless driving. It should be illegal, and ticketable, to speed up once the light turns yellow. If you are so close you cannot stop, you continue through the yellow. If you can stop safely, you do so.

That's pretty simple. Unfortunately, most people are IDIOTS. So they speed through the yellow, they drive 5 mph over the MAXIMUM legal limit, and they generally drive so as to murder more people every year than seven 9/11s.