I read an interesting article the other day about red light cameras, with a debate about whether they’re good for safety or just good for generating revenue. Some things pointed out by the author:
- Rear-end collisions at camera intersections are increased (I’d heard this several times before)
- New Jersey requires all yellow lights to last at least 4 seconds. However, red light camera intersections were found to have a 3 second duration, which resulted in 12,000 tickets being thrown out.
- In 2004, a Texas Transportation Institute study found that increasing the duration of yellow lights by 1.0 second reduced intersection accidents by 40 percent. So maybe increasing the yellow duration is enough to decrease accidents, without having to write any tickets. But that does’t generate revenue for local governments.
- Some jurisdictions like Houston and Anaheim have managed to completely ban red light cameras. Maybe we can do that here if enough people speak out against them, and reinforce it by voting against any local politicians who favor them.
There’s quite a lot more useful and interesting info in the full article, definitely worth reading.