[kolinko]

In which country?

Isn’t there some sort of a regulation on the yellow light duration depending on the max allowed speed on the road?

Living in a country with yellow lights, I never had a situation when I could complain that it was too short or too long.

I was taught that yellow means „stop if you can do so comfortably”, and the very few times I ran a red was definitely my bad call.

[tialaramex]

A sensible way for things to work is that traffic engineers interested in safety and flowing traffic work out a rule for how yellow lights work, and that's the rule for the entire country.

Usually your goal is that the yellow lasts long enough that any vehicle which isn't speeding and has brakes at least as good as those required by law, will either pass through the junction while it's still yellow or could easily stop before it goes red. Since even though some drivers will be speeding, anyone who isn't driving a way out-of-specification heap of junk has _much_ better brakes than required by law, this gives plenty of slack. The engineers need to know speed limits on approach roads, the size of the junction (remember, pass _through_ the junction, it's no good if your fast vehicle is still in the middle of the junction when it goes red) and slopes (which affect braking) and various other factors.

However the US is not, on the whole, a country where the sensible way of doing things has much sway. I'd be astonished if there's a Federal Law in the US that sets usable requirements for their whole country, and frankly it wouldn't surprise me if individual towns get to have local politicians just pick a number out of a hat for how long the yellow lasts for the one junction in that town.

[YeahSureWhyNot]

its federally mandated to be between 3 to 6 seconds. towns are free to choose anything in between. some towns that had 5 second yellow lights will change it to 2 seconds after installing a red light camera and make good amount of money from locals who knows the length of the yellow and attempt to blow thru

[kolinko]

So cities change timings in an illegal way? How is this possible :O

[YeahSureWhyNot]

no, typo. they basically change it within limits just to get drivers trapped

[mises]

> In which country?

America.

> Isn't there some soft of a regulation on the yellow light duration depending on the max allowed speed on the road?

Nope.

> Living in a country with yellow lights

Which? It's also possible that you have a local law.

> I was taught that yellow means ,,stop if you can do so comfortably

Unfortunately, red light cameras cause an issue with this. There is time after a yellow for those few times we make the bad call, because it's not always easy to judge in that short of a time. Red lights make this much harder, and may lead us to stop suddenly and unsafely (part-way into the intersection, get rear-ended, etc.).

[kolinko]

Which country - Poland. Just checked, and it’s actually 3s regardless of the speed.

Red light cameras - yeah, also other forms of automatic traffic control. We have some long stretches of roads where the max speed is 120kmph, with traffic lights every few kms + limit 70kmph on the lights + auto speed radar. Which is crazy because you end up watching the speedometer instead of the intersection.

I heard an interesting solution recently - cameras everywhere, but giving drivers a limit of violations they can do without punishment per a given period.

[mises]

Sorry, could you give a little more detail on the solution? I'm not sure I understand. Though I'm certainly wary of "cameras everywhere". Honestly, that's part of what I don't like about red light cameras.

Towns are careful when they want to be. When I'm out on an 80-85 mph highway, they're careful about warning well in advance, putting up signs that a light is coming, etc. But then there are also the small towns which abruptly drop the speed limit from 75 to 55 then to 35 just for their 500 feet of road. And they always have policemen sitting right there and ready to ticket. To your point, these are often areas where you might want to watch traffic (pulling out onto one of these roads is no fun), and this keeps you from doing so.

I think the bottom line is this: traffic laws ought to be designed to keep people safe. Unfortunately, many towns have a conflict of interest with the revenue certain laws bring in. I'm glad that Texas is preventing this. I think it incites officials to set stupidly low yellow light length s (three seconds, apparently the federal minimum by another comment, is rarely enough).