[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.

[alamortsubite]

Red-light cameras reduce t-bone type collisions, which are highly lethal. The scenarios you list are fantasies. The true problem, which you omit, is drivers recklessly blowing red lights because they're impatient.