The thing i find most overreaching is that our own tax dollars funded the erection of these cameras that in a questionable manner rob us of even more money.

Man, I hate funding erections.

Mounting evidence says the gummint won't give a damm about your studies because it doesn't jive with their ideology-use traffic enforcement as an unlevied tax.

It doesn't matter how many of these studies prove that red-light cameras are dangerous. It'll take a death and a lawsuit to start bringing them down.

Where i'm from, the main technique is to FLOOR it through all the known red-light cameras to avoid getting caught during a yellow transistion. Even during the greens. The other technique is to slow down or brake. Even during the greens. You can see how this is a problem.

I think extending yellow lights with the red light cameras might take alot of the sting out of them. I for one hate them. But most existing cameras here in the LA area seem to have extremely short yellow lights and therefore people tend to slam on the brakes screeching to a stop (to avoid that lovely ticket) only to be rear ended.

...and probably shoved into the intersection and ticketed by the camera anyway.

Has anyone tried to go through a red light camera sideways? I think you might get away with it.

If they want drivers to stop, they should just put out a "Men At Work" sign.

Who mounted the evidence?

In U.S., Canada, and Australia...

red light cameras smash you!

Just rip em down. Its not possible for them to increase traffic safety in any way.

Its against your own best interest to run a red light because youre likely to get creamed by another car.

Everyone knows this and therefore doesnt run red lights whenever possible.

Sometimes, it just happens. Travelling at 40mph within a 100 feet of a yellow light makes it very difficult to judge whether to keep doing or stomp on the brakes, both are equally dangerous.

Around Delaware the duration of the yellow light is notably shorter with camera equiped stoplights. I more than believe that this is deliberate.

Even worse are those damn pedestrian countdown devices... How many times has someone stopped in front of you because they saw it was going to zero when the light was still green?

One time I saw the flash go off from pretty far back. To my initial glee, the car in the intersection had a set of light bars on top, a standard police-issue Crown Vic. Turns out, however, the driver behind him had rear ended said Crown Vic and pushed it into the intersection. Mewonders, did the nice officer slam on his brakes to avoid being snapped by the electronic eye? In any event, I guess it's wise to keep your distance from a cop car.

@johnnyichiban: It's standard operating procedure to shorten the yellow when installing the camera. If they extended the yellow instead, I would fully support them.

@danio3834: Your theory that nobody runs a red light on purpose fails to take into account a small segment of the driving population known as "idiots".

Great- one of the five studies cited was done by a really respected group of traffic engineers: Dick Armey's staff while he was House Majority leader :) .

That really makes me wonder about the cites from other four organizations that I have never heard off.

Hey, what it comes down to for me is that I would rather get rear ended than t-boned, thanks, and here in DC there is clearly less red-light running. I may be the only one so say it here, but I welcome the cameras.

My favorite solution to reduce fatalities AND property damage at intersections?

Roundabouts.

But studies (and anecdotal evidence from our New England brethren) indicate that most Americans are far too dense to put the concept into practice.

In Cleveland, the cameras detect speeders as well as people running lights.

However, I am totally in favor of them. They all have warning signs before you get to the intersection and I know where all the ones I pass are. The benefit here is that since there are speed cameras already on the road, there are no cops taking your speed. So pretty much, you know exactly where not to speed and it might as well be autobahn everywhere else.

@Murph:
I seem to remeber Armey was dead set against this technology when he was in Congress. Congress has a HUGE research arm you know.

Csaba Csere has written countless articles in C&D about this subject as well.

I would rather not have any accidents. Especially if they are caused by the latest revenue enhancement device.

I would only welcome them into my community if they extended the yellow or made it a standard time across all traffic lights, 5 seconds for example.
I've also seen a ticket saying it was red for 0.2 seconds. How about at least 0.5 seconds of red that you don't get a ticket?

It's not that I dislike the idea of the cameras, they are just not fair as they are.

I've seen some places where the crosswalk counts down to alert the pedestrians to the amount of time remaining. Pretty cool. Would it be that hard to integrate that into yellow lights? (especially LED...very easy)

We don't get them fancy picture-cameras down here in Atlanta much. Or not so I've noticed. But where I DO want them and think they'd be a GREAT help, would be for ticketing people who block freaking intersections! I can't stand the aforementioned "idiots" who think it's just dandy to sit in the middle of the intersection long after their direction turned red.

kind of pisses me off, if you didn't notice.

@ash78: OMG! not roundabouts! oh the accidents! I have to turn around in a right-hand circle to go left? DUH! I don't think anyone in my part of the world (Middle America) could figure that out! Oh the humanity!

@ash78: We have these really tiny, half-assed roundabouts here and rumor has it a small town near here has a brand new European style roundy. I need to go there to view the chaos.

I got the hang of roundabouts fairly quickly in the UK and I actually came to like them in all but the heaviest of traffic. When the roundabout isn't moving and no one signals you in, it sucks.

@ash78:
I don't know about drivers, but NJ DOT is too dense to properly deploy roundabouts.

@danio3834: Move to Saint Louis, MO - the wonderfully intelligent folks there run red lights on a regular basis. I'm not even talking about a light changing to red - a full on red light that hasn't cycled in 10 seconds or more.

Or at least they used to... red light cams have cut back on the practice significantly.

@rexplex:
But then again, NJ DOT is too dense to deploy standard intersections either.
They do seem to have a good grasp of tool booths, so they've got that going for them, at least.

@danio3834:
Traveling 40 mnph within 100' of a yellow light is not smart at all.

Here in Albuquerque they've replaced a few stop signs with roundabouts and yield signs, most people just drive straight through and don't look around at all, the stop sign would be better.
I wouldn't mind the cameras except they seem solely designed to raise money, when the yellow time is seemingly cut by half while the speed limit hasn't changed, how are people supposed to stop? Add to that the thousands of idiots who slam on their brakes even at intersections without cameras, and the problem has new dimension. I've personally seen three accidents caused by somebody panicked at the sight of a yellow.

I have been teaching my nephew to drive. One of the first and most repeated items is
"Do not go at the moment the light turns green. At least one or more cars WILL run the light."

Cameras that have to shoot the rear of your car for the plate are okay...Here in L.A. where we have a front plate, they shoot the nose of the car...on an overcast day, the flash hits you right in the face..at least on the one on Sunset and Cahuenga. What I laugh at is all the west coast journalists who write all the articles railing on these things drive press cars which DON'T have front plates! Csaba gets no ticket in Cali!

The cameras have nothing to do with safety. It's all about revenue enhancement and everything but public safety. They could give a crap about our safety, our health, our jobs or our families. The sooner you and yours realize that we are all just little banks for each and every municipality, the sooner you'll give up trying to make sense of how they part us from our money.

/end mini rant

@clinto: Indeed. There was also a gov't funded study some number of years ago that showed speed limits were set universally low.
The gov't certainly has not felt compelled to universally raise speed limits.

I really, really do hate people that run red lights though, they kill people. dead.

The National Motorists Association is a lobby group, they are very VERY one sided. But I agree traffic cameras are simply for revenue.

Red light cameras punish people with no common sense.

Speed cameras prevent people from using common sense.

I'm a nerd, I went to read the studies. One was here in VA
@mwood10: You're right, a big variable was NOT lengthening yellow light times. I see this a lot on the road--people have an idea of what a "fair" or reasonable red/green should be. Lights that aren't green long enough make people run reds. Yes, it's foolish but they do it.
As for pedestrians, in Charlottesville a cop hit a handicapped man in a wheelchair in a crosswalk. They made sure to write the victim a ticket while he was in the ER. He supposedly ignored the "red hand" light telling him to stop. Only many days later did the cops inform themselves of the law, which says that pedestrians in MARKED crosswalks ALWAYS have the right away and cars must stop or otherwise avoid them. In a way, machines and cameras are good because they can't be cowardly self-serving asses.

i love roundabouts! except in very busy traffic... Carmel, IN has recently (in the last 5 years) replaced many of the 4 way stops in 'county road' areas....

some of the people still stop all the time/if there is a car there, the rest of them seem to understand... but i do my best to avoid driving during any peak traffic hr. thus speeding up the time it takes me to drive in the area.... let alone the possibility for 2-lane sideways hooning on county roads late at night....... such fun.... so much fun

as for cameras... don't have experience with them.. but certainly think that there should be a standardized yellow light time either nationwide.. or within in each state.. or maybe city... and also yellow lights between red and green lights... from what i hear, this is common in many (all?) parts of europe... and it just might help..

The only way I can see red light cameras being good is if they increased the Yellow lights and add a count-down timer to red.

*increased the yellow light time period...*

SOME CITIES AROUND MY PART OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA(CERRITOS,CA) CAN'T AFFORD TO MAINTAIN THE CAMERAS. THEY STILL FLASH WHEN YOU GO THROUGH THEM BUT NOYHING EVER COMES IN THE MAIL.

What kind of wussies live in America these days? Don't you know this is exactly what God made shotguns for? Contrary to Big Brother's legal hounds, civil disobedience is a pre-requisite of a just society, because only then will it be impossible for a small group to take control of the judicial and legislative function, and impose tyranny. Civics 101.

Go ahead. Roll over. And once again. And while you're down there...

The guv'nent could care less about public safety, cameras and insanely-low speed limits are simply there to pull even more money out of the middle class pocket.

I'm always nervous of these things and I'll only dare move when the lights are green. When I approach them i'm always thinking 'don't turn yellow, don't turn yellow!'. I have performed a late braking manouver at one of these spots (and almost did have a car ram into my rear). On fast roads, you can see where there are light cameras from the skid marks approaching the stop line.

@mwood10: What I said was, whenever possible, people wont run reds. What I also said was, its difficult to judge what action to take at some times.

There are always going to be people running red lights because of errors in judgement, but anyone with any amount of self preservation will not with full intention blow through a red light with traffic crossing perpendicular.

It should be up to a cop, not a camera, to decide whether such action warrants penalization.

@Bubs: Because only middle-class people get tickets.

Fact is, if people didn't run red lights, this wouldn't be a problem. I am fully tired of people constantly running red lights because they are too impatient to wait the 2 minutes for the next green. The roads around here (Waterloo, ON) are plagued with people that can't stop for red lights. I would love to see red light camera's on every intersection around here.

There is no excuse for it, and I applaud any region for extracting money from those who can't observe the rules of the road.

@donatolla: And what if those rules change from area to area, in order to benefit the municipality in the collection of fines? still ok?

Traffic cameras are evil and they need to go. However, I wouldn't put much faith in this article. I haven't gone to read the studies yet, but my prediction before I do go off for my nerdgasm is this:

They didn't do truly controlled studies. The cameras went in at intersections that were _already_ experiencing a lot of accidents. Traffic continued to get worse, because that's what traffic does. Maybe they controlled for traffic volume/level of service/time of day and referenced non-traffic cam'd intersections, but they didn't control for the fact that only already-dangerous (for whatever reason...volume, speed, design) intersections were included.

@DaveTheBrave: Last I checked, Indiana was in the middle of America, and Indianapolis is pretty much smack-dab in the middle of Indiana. We're figgerin' out the roundy-bouts OK. It really has relieved some congestion in some of the higher trafficked areas of my morning commute.

@rexplex: They've got the jug handle down pat. Give 'em props for that!

@chrystlubitshi: Yea for late night roundabout hoonin'! I really like the new ones just west of 31. Hazel Del Rd. works pretty good, except for the one that leads from two lanes into one...

The ones along 31 do seem to have sped up traffic flow for those who prefer to take the back roads past W. Carmel Dr. - especially since they've linked 116th all the way north to 136th.

@mehugtree: The best part is when two or more cars make a right turn on red, you make a left on green and pull in front of one of them (in your subcompact), and they honk their horn repeatedly in response to your rudeness! I mean, how DARE you pull in front of someone who's performed an illegal maneuver (blocking an intersection, I mean)!

Pisses me off, too, especially since they could put a cop there and make hundreds.

I don't even think the cameras make that much money for the city that puts them in. My town is planning on putting them in, but they aren't buying the cameras. They are "leasing" them from a company in Phoenix AZ who essentially gets a cut from every ticket for "administrative costs" Then there's the payments the city has to make on the darn things and the installation fees as well as maintainance. Seems like the only ones that are making money are the private companies selling these camera systems.

I think another reason the cameras don't/won't work is because they may stop habitual redlight runners, which are few. But they still won't stop accidents caused by people that just aren't paying attention to what they are doing or are DUI. My dad's been hit TWICE by a D-bag running a red as has my mother. Three drivers just weren't paying attention (even told that to police), and on one of the accidents the guy up and drove off.

I also live near the traffic cams in Phoenix/Scottsdale AZ. The highway cams absolutely suck. Thousands of tickets are dished out every year because of them. It doesn't really change the fact that the roads can handle more traffic at higher than posted speeds or that nobody cares if you want to drive your M5 140+MPH at 3:30AM.