Replies

>>Be glad to. Get an engineering degree.

Got one.

>>Join the engineering organizations in your field. Subscribe to their usual publications. Go to their seminars and conventions each year. Read the lastest studies, listen to the people doing the studies when they make their presentation, offer constructive criticism, see the updated studies in following years with the criticisms answered. When the study is accepted by your peers, it will be worked into standards that EVERYONE uses, like the MUTCD.

Hump you, too. I guess you are just blowin' smoke. I am familiar with the MUTCD. I am just looking for the studies that find no benefit to lengthened yellows.

Here is one that shows a benefit:

"The study found that improving signal visibility reduced violations 25 percent. Other changes could net between 18 and 48 percent reductions. Yet they found when the yellow signal was 1 second shorter than the standard ITE timing formula specifies, red light violations jumped 110%. ***Extending the yellow an additional second yielded 53% reduction in violations, producing the greatest benefit of all the factors studied*** (2-6)."

http://www.motorists.org/issues/enforce/tti04.html
http://www.motorists.org/issues/enforce/studies/tti04.pdf

I am just looking for the studies that find no benefit to lengthened yellows.

You don't need a study when you have common sense, which you appear to have.

I'm not going to pretend that lengthened yellow lights will stop all redlight runners - I live in Austin, and have seen my share of people who damn near t-boned me or somebody else because they flat-out ran a red light.

On the other hand, the majority of people I've seen that run redlights would have made it with another second or two - they were simply going too fast or were too close to the intersection and worried about the cars behind them (both of those are entirely seperate issues unto themselves, I must admit, and I don't know how to address those, as telling Texans to obey every posted speed limit is like trying to herd cats).

I would much rather see adding an extra second or two for, say six months, just to see how things go. Contrary to what we see in everyday traffic, the majority of drivers are not stupid and most will not enter an intersection with a red light (and if they are prone to that, Darwin will eventually catch up to them, one way or the other, hopefully before they take somebody else out).

I don't know if I should even stir up this can of worms, but I have noticed that a lot of people who run redlights are gabbing away on cell phones. That may just be because I noticed it a few times and was fixated on it ever since.