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this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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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.
Changing a yellow light for that reason is messed up in so many ways.
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 we compromise and just get rid of cars?
Is there any actual hard evidence of this? Or is it all anecdotal?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130813201430.htm
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.
God bless America, just like its for-revenue prisons.
That is the dumbest argument I ever heard.
How does it encourage dangerous driving when it actively punishes dangerous driving?
The fact it is a revenue source has more to do with people not following the law than the system.
If there were no dangerous drivers, it wouldn't be a revenue source and thus those cameras wouldn't need to exist in the first place.
If anything, asking people to break traffic cameras is encouraging dangerous driving.
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
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.
I have some experience with this.