The problem is that red light cameras incentivizes cities to encourage dangerous driving, because it is now a revenue source. Multiple cities have been caught illegally shortening yellow lights because shorter yellow lights cause more red light violations, yielding more money for the city and also increasing the rate of accidents at those intersections.
Yep, that and the inconsistencies of timing. Some areas yellow are very long, some are short, and some seen to vary within the "allowable range." In other words, encouraging people to slam on the brakes because God only knows when the lights will change.
I hate the cameras (I spend most of my work day driving city/suburban areas) and think that if they're going to exist, they should have longer yellows to give more opportunity for drivers not to panic between getting ticketed or rear ended.
Euro Truck Simulator taught me that some countries have ways of indicating how long is left in a light. Some have progress bars, some go from solid to flashing to indicate an imminent change, and some do creative stuff with extra lights
You seem to be arguing that the cameras are making it less safe by causing drivers to slam on their brakes. Can you point me to any evidence that they are making it less safe? Everything I've read has been unequivocal that these reduce risky driving behaviors and have increase safety.
I read up on it a few years back. Long story short, the number of "T-bone" type accidents where the side of the car gets hit decreased, while the number of people getting rear ended significantly increased (allowing that some rear end collisions also go unreported due to lower degrees of damage.)
There was a whole rethink of the use/benefits and disabling/not installing them further, but I can't remember the outcome.
Like I said, I spend a lot of time driving, so forgive me for not pulling sources in the middle of my work day. Gotta drive to the next patient's house lol.
How about instead, we make it way harder to get a license and then just let thr good drivers go as fast as they want (exaggerating, thinking more like those euro highways)?
There'll be less cars on the road and good drivers can stop being annoyed by all the slow, confused, sleepy drivers
There are also a bunch of court cases where tickets have been thrown out because the yellow time was too short, but maybe you think that counts as "anecdotal" because I can't find a source to cite that's tallied them all up.
People say this all the time, and I've never seen any kind of proof, either.
The only thing people point to is one area in a Houston suburb where they installed red light cameras, and people were so scared of running the lights, they would stop short in the yellow, resulting in more rear end accidents. Hardly a compelling reason to be against these cameras nationwide.
How does it encourage dangerous driving when it actively punishes dangerous driving?
Because the people who habitually drive badly find out pretty quickly how to game the system and not face the consequences, and/or consider the fines part of the cost of driving how they want. Fines don't stop bad behavior, they just put a price on it.
Before you dismiss me by saying I just want to get away with speeding, consider that it's easy to fight a ticket from a camera- in most cases, you just don't respond and it goes away, though of course that varies with jurisdiction. If I wanted to get away with dangerous driving, I'd be all for replacing cops with cameras.
The fact it is a revenue source has more to do with people not following the law than the system.
The problem is cities reducing the timings, because it'll go from green to red without sufficient time to safely stop. The whole purpose of the yellow light is to give you wiggle room to either stop or get through the intersection before the next cycle. If a sudden red forces you to slam on the breaks hard enough to risk being rear ended (or worse in icy conditions risk sliding into the intersection)
Plus if the timings are tight enough someone trying to stop/complete their menuever might find themselves in the intersection with opposing traffic now trying to enter
Traffic cameras are just trying to put out a greese fire by throwing water on it. If you don't know better it seems like a good idea, but in reality it just makes the problem worse
Drivers are assholes by me too and enforcement is low here too, but that doesn't justify a camera watching every driver 24/7, plus pedestrians in some areas.
If you want more traffic enforcement, get the cops to do their fucking jobs.
Lol good luck with getting the cops to do anything. They love abusing traffic laws themselves.
But these cameras do not watch people. They take a picture when they detect a car is going too fast or blows a red light, not constant surveillance.
Plus cars are on public roads, peds are on public streets. I don't really care about the privacy argument tbh in this case. Much more people are harmed from cars speeding and blowing red lights then any sort of abuse involving public cameras.
But these cameras do not watch people. They take a picture when they detect a car is going too fast or blows a red light, not constant surveillance.
Speeding ticket like many other crimes are an issue on;y if you are poor. Making presecution more agressive and non-fines based or limiting the cars sold\registered there are probably the quick fixes to this systemic trouble.
It's a black box we don't have much info about in this or other states. What makes the overseer abstain from OCRing every car plate and having it's trajectory mapped at every junction? There are many justifications to do so, like car theft or general tracking of wrongdoers, but with it's automation comes the understanding that every ride in your car is tracked A to B without you knowing it.
Those are traffic cams dude, not enforcement cameras.
Traffic cameras watch traffic and a lot of them are open to be viewed by anyone.
Enforcement cameras take shots on motion and object detection. Just like toll cameras which snap a pic of your license plate as you drive under them, they aren’t meant to view traffic live. The cameras have very different tech as they are for a specific purpose.
It’s not pedantic if I’m addressing your assertions based on the article you linked in reply to the guy saying your not being watch via what are basically just really high tech photo cameras.
It's beyond hilarious that flying squid would whine about someone else being pedantic, because most times when we've butted heads, pedanticism has been their go-to once their argument starts to falter.
But it's especially funny here when you aren't even being pedantic, but pointing out that the article they provided is talking about something almost completely separate.
I'd much rather an almost unbiased and passive camera making the decision rather than a likely racist, and certainly biased in other ways, cops enforcing the law. Certainly considering I would rather cops doing more important work than handing out tickets. Maybe even spending that time getting training to be less fuckwits.
If you said they should be put in cars, I would agree that is watching it very driver 24/7, but strategically placed cameras in dangerous areas seems like a good idea to me and certainly not watching everyone all the time.
Unbiased cameras? Obviously the bias would capitalism. More tickets more revenue. Lol who do you think is reviewing the tapes? Clearly not the racist cops and judges you spoke of /s.
Until everyone behaves within acceptable societal standards traffic / red light cams are a reasonable part of the strategy to steer assholes towards the goal. As much as awareness campaigns, improving training, lowering vehicle velocity when it sees yellow automagically maybe…
Which doesn’t mean there aren’t unfortunate abuses by cops or city wrt shortening yellow duration to pocket more cash or such like.
And I strongly believe that cops should be doing more interesting cop stuff then enforcing traffic tickets in our days and age.
There's also the aspect of designing roads in a way that discourages driving dangerously, like in the Netherlands. Raised crosswalks, speed bumps, narrowed lanes, physical barriers, etc.
If we make completely straight, flat roads with wide lanes going through neighborhoods, people are just going to drive down them fast because that's what subconsciously feels like the correct speed.
I don't know how it works in America, but in Germany and presumably most parts of Europe, red light cameras are triggered by coils under the road (similar to speed cameras). There's usually one coil right past the stopping line (for cars being halfway over) and another coil somewhere closer to the center of the intersection (for fully running a red light).
Last I checked, there weren't drunk driving cameras, so I'm not sure how that's relevant. If anything, that makes my point for me. Human cops enforce anti-drunk driving laws.
If you want more traffic enforcement, get the cops to do their fucking jobs.
How do you imagine the cops do it so it's the same as with the cameras? Or would you be fine with worse enforcement, as long as you do away with cameras?
There can be a middle ground between almost no enforcement and taking a photo every time someone might be breaking the law, but also the camera might be miscalibrated or malfunctioning somehow.
If they did that, they would just have a load of people going "why aren't you catching real criminals?" Just don't go through red lights. It's not difficult.
All these cameras accomplish is forcing people to brake strongly and spontaneously, which is unsafe. In truth, they’re a revenue stream first, second, and third; for the government, insurance companies, and automotive shops. It’s a selective tax system that also nudges your bumper every other week. I don’t believe they’ve ever actually improved traffic conditions.
“For right angle crashes, the review found a decrease in overall crashes and a decrease in injury crashes. For rear end crashes, the review found an increase in overall crashes but no significant difference in injury crashes“
Impeding traffic, increasing accident rates, and arriving more slowly make for a poor lifestyle pitch. Speed differentials hurt everyone, including you.
Legitimately good bait, but preventing someone from driving exactly the speed limit, a construct lagging severely behind current safety standards, is more important to me than simply calling it out.
Arriving 10% later is well worth additional safety. And for any accidents due to drivers around me not respecting the speed limits, they are to blame. I'm honestly baffled by the "you are the problem for following rules" proposition. No, you are the problem for breaking them. They are there for a reason.
The safety standards were set when roads were not dominated by multi-ton trucks - something that eats away all the progress we've made to both braking and safety systems, and then a bit more.
Thinking everyone is just a backwards thinker who didn't bother to change the limits would be far from truth.