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Red light, green light: Traffic cameras are about increasing revenue, not safety
New York Post ^ | 05/26/2013 | Kyle Smith

Posted on 05/27/2013 11:11:10 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

The federal government recommends that yellow lights at intersections last for at least three seconds before turning red. So why are so many yellows being timed at 2.5 seconds? And why are those fleeting yellows often located at intersections where red-light cameras are installed?

The mandarins tell us that red-light cameras are for our own safety, and that we need more of them than the 150 already in New York City. “While we wait,” city transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said last month, “New Yorkers are dying on our streets.”

So why increase the mayhem by cutting the duration of the yellow light by half a second? The city continues to deny that it did so, but both a Post investigation and a AAA study found intersections with cameras had yellow lights that lasted as little as 2.53 seconds, 15% less than the city’s standard.

Three motorists subsequently brought a class-action suit against the city.

Other reporters around the country are finding similar situations. In Florida, WTSP-TV in St. Petersburg found that the operators of cameras had reduced yellow-light times by half a second without telling motorists. The same thing happened in 2008 in San Bernadino, Calif., whose city council then ordered the removal of the cameras. Half a million people are getting refunds in a New Jersey class action after complaining about yellow-light timing when they were ticketed.

It’s unclear whether the cameras even increase safety. A 2005 Washington Post study found that “the number of accidents has gone up at intersections with the cameras.”

Though many studies have found that cameras reduce side impact or “T-bone” accidents involving cars heading at right angles to each other, the same studies also find an increase in rear-end collisions.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; US: New York
KEYWORDS: nannystate; quotas; redlight; ticketquotas; trafficcameras
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To: SamAdams76

I live on Long Island, where they’ve been putting these things up all over the place.

Been driving for more than 30 years, and I’ve NEVER seen so many rear-end accidents and near accidents in my life.

It is my opinion that the red-light cameras do absolutely nothing to increase safety and are merely a revenue enhancing scheme. If they REALLY wanted to increase safety, there is a much better way to do it: Increase the time between the red light in one direction and the green light in the other. Let’s make it a 3-second delay. I bet that would stop 90% of the accidents at intersections.

BTW, even on traffic-strangled Long Island, I’ve only very rarely seen an actual red-light runner - one who simply blasts through a red light. I HAVE seen many folks who, for one reason or another (slick road, somebody tailgating him, simple miscalculation, etc.) BARELY miss the yellow and squeak through a light which has turned red only a fraction of a second earlier.

Meanwhile, these damned cameras have everybody so jumpy that people are slamming on their brakes even on a green light, trying to guess when the light is going to change. Then, when it doesn’t turn yellow when they thought it would, they speed up. When WHAMMO! the light turns yellow and they slam on their brakes all over again, causing all kinds of havoc to everyone in back of them.

Nope, I don’t see the safety increase. I see $$$$$ for the town is all.

Regards,


61 posted on 05/27/2013 5:38:36 PM PDT by VermiciousKnid (Sic narro nos totus!)
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To: Ben Mugged

Probably busy texting.


62 posted on 05/27/2013 5:39:56 PM PDT by gura (If Allah is so great, why does he need fat sexually confused fanboys to do his dirty work? -iowahawk)
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To: freedumb2003

No human document not even the Constitution as written can be utterly sinproof. Only the Lord is, someone Who was originally present alongside the Constitution but now America has largely jettisoned Him.


63 posted on 05/27/2013 5:50:13 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Whatever promise that God has made, in Jesus it is yes. See my page.)
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To: Ben Mugged
...and if you have followed my posts on FR since 1998 you would know that.

Your screen name dates to 2005.

64 posted on 05/27/2013 9:09:31 PM PDT by Half Vast Conspiracy ( Because police powers are essential to the public good that abusing them is so offensive.)
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To: Half Vast Conspiracy

I got kicked off that year for disagreeing with Jim about first amendment rights before it was explained to me that this is Jim’s forum and not a first amendment blog. My old screen name was Red Warrior.


65 posted on 05/28/2013 2:46:28 PM PDT by Ben Mugged (The number one enemy of liberalism is reality.)
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