I've heard that they are shortening the yellow light time so much, that it basically goes straight from green to RED, in an attempt to boost ticket revenues and pay bigger retirements to city employees. Any truth to that, outside of California?
Acutally, no. The instance mentioned was when the State politicians specified a minimum yellow time that was more than recommended by the ITE (Institute of Traffic Engineers) formula. There have been many, many years of study on yellow times and it has been repeatedly found that too short is dangerous and also too long is dangerous. The safest time is between 3 seconds and 5 or 5-1/2 seconds, depending on the physical characteristics of the intersection.
Who would you rather control the timing at an intersection: some politicians or a nationwide group of trained traffic engineers who conduct studies, publish them for peer review, and argue over them (sometimes for years) before making a recommendation to lawmakers?
Unfortunately, most published literature by the ITE confirms that red-light cameras increase the safety of the intersection (when other existing means have been tried and failed).
It's true in Scottsdale Arizona. The light stays on yellow for about 5 nanoseconds then goes to red.
They'll never catch me though because a couple of years ago, some road debris came up and hit my license plate and bent it in such a way that you can't really read one of the license plate numbers from the angle that the red-light camera is pointing. I realized what a great thing a bent license plate could be so decided not to fix it.