[ufocia]

We have a bunch of red light cameras which actually cause more accidents than they prevent. Perhaps t-bones are more dangerous than read-ends, but accident prevention it isn't.

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

[senordevnyc]

Do you have any data on that?

It seems pretty messed up to suggest that we shouldn’t enforce people not blowing through red lights because then they’ll slam on their brakes and cause rear end accidents instead.

[toss1]

Not GP, but I've seen multiple credible news stories on this.

The problem isn't the red-light camera itself, it is that whoever installs/manages them also reduces the time of the yellow-light warning, so the red light comes on significantly sooner. The normal yellow light timing is a properly studied and engineered interval based on traffic and speed to give drivers sufficient warning to see, decide, and go or slow-stop in a safe and predictable fashion.

When the red-light-camera installers/managers decide to cut that time to increase infractions and increase revenue, they create situations where drivers think they are going to make it to the intersection in good time, but are surprised by the sooner-changing red light, so emergency-brake before the line. This causes accidents, including accidents where the car is pushed into the intersection and causes a rear-end then T-bone.

This invalid yellow-red light timing was revealed in some lawsuits about it.

I think the right solution is to maintain properly engineered timing, install cameras that also trigger a full video from multiple angles, and manually evaluate each positive and ticket only the egregious ones and have records of the violators who caused accidents.

But since the easy money is evidently too much of a temptation to fck with people, ban them all.

[senordevnyc]

If we have the ability to ban things in this world, why don’t we ban the actual negative thing, not the potentially helpful thing that’s being abused?

[toss1]

Human nature.

We already ban the thing that is being abused — running red lights. Yet people do it with deadly results so much we're looking for another solution.

With the cameras, the camera salespeople and the town managers just can't get away from "It increases revenue (and if we screw with the yellow-light-timing we can increase it even more!".

I'd be all over making any town manager and red-light-camera-salesperson involved in a decision to screw with the red lights personally and criminally liable for any accidents resulting from screwing with yellow-light timing, and requiring all timing before installation to be officially logged, but they'll try to find ways around that too. And then there is the whole surveillance capitalism thing — we've got the cameras, why not record all license plates, and tie them to driver license and voting records, and, and, and...

What is the least-worst thing to do?

[alamortsubite]

Definitely reduce injury and deaths due to car crashes.

[toss1]

Red lights reduce injury and deaths due to car crashes.

Red light cameras do NOT do so, and when the companies/cities screw with the properly engineered yellow light timing to increase revenue, the cameras INCREASE crashes and injuries. It has been definitively studied multiple times, and cities have de-installed camera systems after these findings.

If cameras are installed without adjusting the yellow- light timing, the effect is not demonstrated. Thinking about it, a likely camera ticket will reduce one of three types of red-light-running, where an impatient driver slows at the red light, looks, then crosses anyway if traffic is light. That one causes few accidents — the careful drivers are already careful and either don't do it or do it with sufficient cautions accidents are extremely unlikely.

The others, where the driver fails to see the red light and blows through it, or where they are just on some criminal blast through town (evading cops, high on drugs, whatever), will not be deterred in the slightest by the cameras. The eyesight of the first will not be helped by a likely camera-automated-ticket, and the second already has far bigger legal problems coming and won't care.

So, explain the circumstances where a red light camera actually reduces accidents and injuries. I'm not even seeing a plausible measurable effect beyond revenue extraction.

[RIMR]

There's usually a two-second delay between a light turning red and the next light turning green, just as a simple safety precaution. No driver is perfect, and red lights get run through accidentally all the time.

While running the red light is still dangerous, running it as soon as it turns red is unlikely to cause an accident. It's still ticketable, and if a cop sees it happen, they should make a stop and issue a ticket.

If you are distracted, or time the yellow light badly, and you have to make a decision on whether to lay on the horn and run the red light as soon as it changes, or slam your brakes and try to avoid running through the intersection, you're already in a position where you're going to have to commit a moving violation, and you don't need the threat of automatic monetary penalties guiding your judgement on which move to make.

There are situations where slamming the brakes creates a more serious hazard than running the red light, but the red light cameras only ticket you for running the red light. Why create an artificial preference for one hazard over the other, rather than trust the driver to drive defensively in these situations?

The cameras don't even need to go away; they just need a human in the loop to apply these tickets rationally. Maybe don't ticket the driver who barely missed yellow, but do ticket the driver who blew through the red with zero regard for the rules. Make sure these rules are understood by drivers, so that they don't fear automatic enforcement more than they do bodily harm to themselves and others, but still think twice about ignoring the rules of the road.

[dole]

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/05049/

[alamortsubite]

This seems to say the opposite, which is that the benefits of reducing right-angle crashes (getting t-boned) outweighs the increase in rear-end crashes.

[ljf]

How do the cameras cause the crash, and not the lights themselves? Is it that the flashes of the camera causes people to brake suddenly, or the very presence of the camera causes some people to brake at the lights and others not to?

I find it interesting, as in the UK we don't have loads of red light cameras (though we do have them) but people driving through red lights is a rarity - even when there is no-one around and at night, the vast majority of people will obey a red light.