[af_vet_rr]

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.

[Atlas Sneezed]

Indeed. The lesson to be learned if one is willing to avoid simplistic thinking, and an obedient sheeple (or jackboot) mindset is that traffic engineering is often poorly done (it's government, after all.) Signals are sometimes miusplaced, poorly visible, and poorly programmed.

There are LOTS of benefits to be gained by fixing those things, because those problems are what CAUSES many or most of red-light running incidents. Simple signal timing can essentially eliminate the opportunity to run red lights, whether inadvertant, careless, or intentional.

When you reward the bureaucrats with camera revenue for leaving these dangerous problems alone, you'll just get more harm to public safety.