RED LIGHT TICKETS

Most states have regulations REQUIRING a minimum yellow time length; most of the locations w/ red light photo rigs have had that yellow time DECREASED below this time frame.

The minimum yellow interval is usually not dictated by state law -- it's a specific design requirement for each intersection, based on the travel speed on both roadways, sight lines in each direction, etc.

I find it hard to believe that anyone in government would allow a traffic signal to be re-timed so that there is an unsafe yellow interval -- the exposure to civil lawsuits in the event of a traffic accident would be enormous. And any municipal engineer who approves such a signal design would stand to have his professional license revoked by his state board of professional engineers.

I've posted this numerous times on FreeRepublic -- I will gladly work at no cost for anyone here who thinks they've been victimized by a red-light camera involving a yellow phase that has been deliberately reduced in this manner.

Demand a jury trial in downtown LA. Hire Johnnie Chochran. If you're not African-American, wear a blackface to court a la Al Jolson (Kiwi shoe polish oughta do the job.) Come back here for ide-errs if Johnnie gets hit by a writer's block and cain't come up with suitable rhymes.

have nothing to do with safety and everything to do with easy revenue enhancement.

I just discovered that North Carolina now adds $100.00 court costs to each and every ticket, regardless of how you plea..

Meega, Nala Kweesta!

Baseball bat or a rifle might work.

If you mean you want to fight the camera :)

This is very good advice. Also, the Federal Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices requires, in section 4B-20:

Traffic control signals shall be operated in a manner consistent with traffic requirements. Data from engineering studies shall be used to determine the proper phasing and timing for a signal.

There's also 4B-15, which reads in part:

Yellow vehicle change intervals should have a range of approximately 3 to 6 seconds. Generally the longer intervals are appropriate to higher approach speeds.

You should also check out the National Motorists' Association, they have a lot of research and information regarding red-light cameras.

I'm not crazy about the red light cameras, especially with what happened here in San Diego (the traffic engineers shortened the yellow light cycle to get more tickets).

They did that around where I am too. Really annoyed me, because I absolutely HATE red light runners, but I also hate it when govt bureaucrats deliberately try to trap people into breaking laws by radically altering light times too. When you are by habit used to a 30 second green for a left turn at a particular intersection and one day it's five seconds (I kid you not), stranding you in a large busy intersection as it turns red, that's so obviously a scheme to trip people up it's not even funny. What's worse, it created a more dangerous situation than they intitially attempted to remedy.

Tell the judge you are a politician, the laws certainly do not apply to them.

The real key is to fight the red light cameras BEFORE you get the ticket.

I find it hard to believe that anyone in government would allow a traffic signal to be re-timed so that there is an unsafe yellow interval -- the exposure to civil lawsuits in the event of a traffic accident would be enormous. And any municipal engineer who approves such a signal design would stand to have his professional license revoked by his state board of professional engineers.

Believe it, because it has happened. Lockheed Martin is operating the red-light cameras on behalf of the city, both in Virginia and in San Diego, and they get a cut of each ticket. They have been proven to have deliberately sacrificed motorist safety on the altar of the almighty buck.

From the National Motorists' Association page on this subject:

"...The Virginia Department of Transportation increased the yellow time on the traffic lights at US50 and Fair Ridge Drive by 1.50 seconds on March 26, 2001. This increase in yellow time from 4.00 seconds to 5.50 seconds resulted in a 96% drop in citations, less than one per day, at this red light camera enforced location."

Here's another document from Congressman Dick Armey:

Two attorneys representing 290 motorists in San Diego, California have taken on this system-and won. Arthur F. Tait and Coleen Cusak forced the city to pull the plug on all nineteen red light cameras after they uncovered evidence that the camera hardware was being manipulated to entrap motorists.
Their lawsuit also forced the private company that operates the cameras to release over 5,000 pages of confidential documents about the program. These papers describe what the real motivating factor behind these cameras has been.
Safety was never the primary consideration. In fact, none of the devices were placed at any of San Diego's top-ten most dangerous intersections. Instead, the documents tell us how the camera operators consciously sought out mistimed intersections as locations for new red light cameras.

Why should the city worry about lawsuits? Most of the time, there's no accidents because the cross-traffic light is still red, and they've got unlimited legal resources on staff, and you get to pay THEM (taxes) for their defense against your suit, plus have the tens of thousands of dollars they've scammed from other "red light runners" to spend against you.

What you've said here is different than what has been posted. In the first case, there is no indication that a yellow interval of 4.00 seconds did not meet the standards for a safe yellow phase at that intersection. If anything, I would think that 5.50 seconds sounds excessively long unless the vehicles are traveling at very high speeds. At most intersections (again, there are a lot of variables involved here), it is customary to have combined yellow and "all red" phases that somewhere on the order of five or six seconds.

If they extended the yellow phase to 10.00 seconds, I'll bet you'd have no red light violations at all. You'd also have an intersection that functions very inefficiently.

I have no doubt that municipalities are deliberately mis-using the hardware to generate additional revenue. However, the hardware that is being mis-used is not the signal itself, but the camera and its detector system. In the San Diego case, I believe the major issue with the system was that the loop detectors in the roadway were not placed properly -- they were set too close to the intersection so that someone who drove over it while the light was still yellow would trigger the camera to snap a picture.

At most intersections (again, there are a lot of variables involved here), it is customary to have combined yellow and "all red" phases that somewhere on the order of five or six seconds.

The Federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices indicates in 4B-15 that the yellow interval should have a range of 3 to 6 seconds, depending on the intersection, and that's the authoritative reference for this sort of thing, custom aside.

On October 15, 1999, they shortened the yellow time at that intersection from 5.5 seconds to 4.0 seconds, three days after the red light camera contract was signed with Lockheed-Martin.

October 12, 1999 - Fairfax County gives red light camera go ahead. Big profits projected: "County supervisors gave final approval to the pilot program yesterday by awarding a three-year contract to Lockheed Martin IMS to install and maintain the cameras. Police employees will process the photographs and send tickets." .... "The county estimates that the cameras will catch 333,000 red-light runners during the next three years. If that proves true, the program would bring in about $13 million in fines, more than enough to cover the $6.7 million cost of running the program, officials said."
["Fairfax to Install 10 Stoplight Cameras", Michael D. Shear, Washington Post, 10/12/1999]
October 15, 1999 - Yellow time at US50 and Fair Ridge in Fairfax County, VA shortened from 5.50 to 4.00 seconds.

Big profits, at the expense of traffic safety.

There's this belief among some individuals that people are in general a bunch of crazed leadfeet, blindly bailing through intersections without the slightest regard for the safety of others, and they cling to that belief because they fail to understand the evidence against it that is piled high right before their very eyes:

"Despite clear warnings at intersections equipped with red light cameras, more than 78,000 fines were issued last year. This is an increase of more than 3,000 on the previous year. "To see so many people fined for disobeying red lights shows motorists are not getting the message and have a total lack of respect for the dangers associated with red light running," Sorrenson [Chief Superintendent Ron Sorrenson, New South Wales most senior traffic policeman] told Drive. "It beggars belief that after so many years and with clear signposting that we are still catching this number of people."
["Traffic-light runners in the red zone", Sydney Morning Herald, August 11, 2000]
"Well, the red light cameras are doing what we want. It is frustrating that our numbers continue to go up, so we're hoping at some point the message goes out and people change their behavior."
[At 52:17 into the broadcast, Chief Charles Moose in response to a question about how the cameras are doing, "Ask The Chief"; Featuring Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose, WTOP Radio 3/15/2002] (28 months after start of rlc enforcement in Montgomery County)

The fact is that most people drive reasonably and cautiously, but traffic engineering was being stacked against them to pad Lockheed-Martin's bottom line.

In the first case, there is no indication that a yellow interval of 4.00 seconds did not meet the standards for a safe yellow phase at that intersection.

The results, a 96% reduction in red light violations, should speak for themselves as a crystal-clear indication.

The Federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices indicates in 4B-15 that the yellow interval should have a range of 3 to 6 seconds, depending on the intersection, and that's the authoritative reference for this sort of thing, custom aside.

The MUTCD is not the authoritative reference for signal timing. That document simply provides a range of "typical" yellow intervals, and it clearly states that standard traffic engineering practices should be used in each specific case.

According to tbe Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) standard practice for traffic signal design, the yellow interval on a given approach to an intersection is as follows:

y = t + [v/(2a+2Gg)]

where . . .

y = length of yellow interval (seconds)
t = driver perception/reaction time (seconds)
v = vehicle speed (feet per second)
a = vehicle deceleration rate (ft/sec²)
G = acceleration due to gravity (ft/sec²)
g = grade of approach (%)

Standard values for t, a, and G are 1.0 seconds, 10 ft/sec², and 32.2 ft/sec², respectively.

On a flat grade, a yellow interval of 5.50 seconds would indicate a design vehicle speed of 90 feet per second, or just over 61 miles per hour. I'd like to meet the guy who recommended a signalized intersection for a roadway that operates at this speed. Even with a 6% descending grade on one approach to the intersection, a 5.50 second yellow interval would indicate a design speed of nearly 50 miles per hour.

Of course, it is also possible that the area in question has a lot of older drivers, in which case the highway department might use a perception/reaction time in excess of 1.0 seconds when designing their signals.

The 96% reduction in red-light violations at the intersection in question appears to be a bit misleading, for it seems that the yellow interval was extended by 1.50 seconds but the detector/camera system was unchanged. To obtain a true measure of the effect of extending the yellow phase, the loop detector in the roadway that triggered the red-light camera should have been moved further back from the intersection to account for the increased yellow phase. Specifically, the detector should have been moved back whatever distance a vehicle would cover in the extra 1.50 seconds.

Of course there would be a 96% reduction in red-light violations under these circumstances -- the camera is only detecting vehicles that entered the intersection 1.50 seconds after the light turned red!

Ironically, field tests have shown that extending the yellow phase beyond a certain point (somewhere in the range of 5 seconds) actually results in an increase of red-light violations because motorists see the light turn yellow from so far away from the intersection that they cannot accurately gauge whether they should stop or continue through the intersection.

According to tbe Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) standard practice for traffic signal design, the yellow interval on a given approach to an intersection is as follows:

Thanks for posting that formula, it's quite enlightening. On a flat grade, a yellow interval of 5.50 seconds would indicate a design vehicle speed of 90 feet per second, or just over 61 miles per hour. I'd like to meet the guy who recommended a signalized intersection for a roadway that operates at this speed. Even with a 6% descending grade on one approach to the intersection, a 5.50 second yellow interval would indicate a design speed of nearly 50 miles per hour.

Looking at the TopoZone map for this area, it does appear to be quite hilly. The map is out of date, since it doesn't even show Fair Ridge Drive on it, and shows the shopping center as new construction.

However, if you examine the contour lines where Fair Ridge Drive was to be built at its point of intersection with Highway 50, almost due north and a smidge west from the intersection of West Ox Road (Route 608) and its cross street between Highway 50 and Highway 66, and assume they didn't carve down any hills too significantly, you see a decline over a very short distance to the approximately 400 foot elevation of the riverbed from the 450 foot contour. So your application of this equation may be entirely accurate.

And note that they shortened the yellow interval to four seconds from its original 5.5 three days after the red light camera contract was signed as a result of a wreck, not as a result of considered traffic engineering analysis.

My point is that contrary to the dearly-held beliefs of people like Chief Moose, most people don't run red lights. If they have an intersection where dozens and dozens of people every day are running red lights, then they need to take a second look at the engineering of the intersection instead of castigating the people who pay their salaries. But I guess the multi-million dollar signs in their eyes blinded them to that fact.

The 96% reduction in red-light violations at the intersection in question appears to be a bit misleading, for it seems that the yellow interval was extended by 1.50 seconds but the detector/camera system was unchanged. To obtain a true measure of the effect of extending the yellow phase, the loop detector in the roadway that triggered the red-light camera should have been moved further back from the intersection to account for the increased yellow phase.

Specifically, the detector should have been moved back whatever distance a vehicle would cover in the extra 1.50 seconds.

I think you're jumping to conclusions here. The red light camera is inherently tied to the phase of the signal, by definition - it doesn't trigger a photo unless the light is already red, regardless of the length of the yellow phase. Adjusting the signal timing is a software operation in most modern traffic control systems, and it would be ridiculous for the manufacturers to require a road crew with a diamond saw and a union electrician to be involved in a signal timing change.

And indeed, they don't - American Traffic Systems' RL-200 system...

MEETS U.S. RED LIGHT VIOLATION STANDARDS - RL-200 captures the violating vehicle's front wheels exactly 12 inches in front of the stop bar in the first photo; in the second photo, the back wheels are captured just beyond the crosswalk.

Also...

When the light turns red, the sensors become active. Any vehicle that crosses into the intersection will be detected and the camera will capture two images of the violation. The first image shows the vehicle behind the violation line on a red light and the second image proves that the vehicle (and driver) continued through intersection this can be accomplished with a single or dual camera system.

Detecting who has crossed into the intersection requires a sensor beyond the stop line (12 inches, as above) within the intersection, not back away from the intersection.

The measured 96% reduction in violations is 100% real, much to the dismay of Fairfax County and LockMart who suddenly found themselves a few million dollars short of their projected "big profits" at the expense of motorists.

y = t + [v/(2a+2Gg)]
Standard values for t, a, and G are 1.0 seconds, 10 ft/sec2, and 32.2 ft/sec2, respectively.

That forumula has no margin for error: a driver who is traveling at 50fps (34mph) on level ground will be allowed a 3.5 second yellow. If the driver is 175 feet from the intersection when the light changes, he must within one second determine whether he can stop before the traffic signal. At that moment, he will be 125 feet from the intersection. If he continues forward, he will cross the intersection exactly as the light turns red. If he tries to stop, he will land precisely on the line.

Of course, cars generally don't have a magical ranging device to indicate when an intersection is in stopping distance. If the driver in the above example were more than 125 feet from the intersection 1.0 seconds after the light changed, he'd run the red light. If any less, he'd enter the intersection after the cross traffic had already started moving. Neither possibility is exactly friendly.

To be sure, most of the time a driver's reaction time will be less than 1.0 seconds, and most of the time a vehicle will manage more than .31g of decceleration. On the other hand, many reasonable factors may cause a driver to have a reaction time greater than 1.0 seconds, or may cause a decceleration rate of 10fps/s not to be safely achievable.

Consider also that proceeding through an intersection 0.1 seconds after the light turns red will pose much less danger to other motorists than failing to stop before the intersection and consequently entering it longer after the light has turned red (or, for that matter, stopping before the intersection and then getting pushed into it by a vehicle which didn't stop far enough behind it). Hair-trigger traffic light cameras encourage motorists in borderline cases to take the more dangerous course of action than they otherwise would.

But...I've seen far too many knuckleheads ignoring red lights over the years, too.

If there were some sort of graded system (e.g. $0.10 for each ms a motorist's car was "late", up to a limit of $250 but with no tickets being written for times under 250ms) the cameras might be somewhat reasonable, although they would still in some cases promote driver behavior that would otherwise be unwise.

From what I've read, traffic-light cameras in general do not reduce accident rates; in most cases where they have a noticeable effect they increase accident rates. This is in some measure, I suspect, because of their influence on driver behavior. Absent such cameras, a driver who finds himself in the unfortunate situation(*) of being unable to, with certainty, either stop safely before the intersection or reach it before the red, will try the latter course. This is in almost every case the course of action least likely to cause an accident. Red light cameras change that--they encourage drivers to try to stop, even when doing so may be dangerous and end up causing an accident.

(*) Three simple examples: (1) driver's attention is briefly directed away from the road in front by e.g. a honking horn, siren, glare in rear-view mirror, etc; when gaze returns to road in front, light is already yellow; (2) driver has noticed a large truck tailgating him and fears being rear-ended if he stops suddenly; (3) another vehicle momentarily obscures view of upcoming traffic signal; when signal is visible, it is already yellow. Note, btw, that in cases (1) and (3), a driver who proceeds through the yellow will succeed unless he was unlucky on the signal timing; a driver who tries to stop unsuccessfully may cause an accident even if he could have proceeded through the intersection.

Standard values for t, a, and G are 1.0 seconds, 10 ft/sec2, and 32.2 ft/sec2, respectively.

BTW, the emergency-stop decceleration requirement for certain trucks is about 10.8ft/sec2 on dry pavement. Under less-than-ideal conditions, a truck may not be able to meet the 10ft/sec2 decceleration posited by that formula.

Better to simply say (if true) I remember that intersection on that date because..... and that light was yellow when I entered intertsection because.....

Depending upon the exact statutes/regulations in the state in question, what about "If that's the night/day I think it was, there was a large red semi tailgating me when the light turned yellow. I started to slow down, but noticed the truck was suddenly closing and was likely to hit; the only way I could avoid an accident was to accelerate through the intersection; unfortunately, my previous attempt at stopping made me 47ms 'late'." From what I understand, in many states a motorist is legally required to avoid causing an accident if at all possible, other traffic regulations notwithstanding. If road conditions were less than ideal, a motorist may be in a position where he could stop before an intersection, and a truck behind him also be able to stop before the intersection, and yet it not may not be possible for both to stop before the intersection, nor for the car to reach the intersection before a hyper-short light changes.

Good idea; safe harbor...greater good, etc.

Just be sure photos, video, etc., do not show large open space behind you.....