Cities Tampering With Traffic Lights To Generate Revenue

Techdirt is reporting that there has been a rash of reports indicating that red light cameras are being used to generate revenue rather than to promote safety. "Time and time again studies have shown that if cities really wanted to make traffic crossings safer there's a very simple way to do so: increase the length of the yellow light and make sure there's a pause before the cross traffic light turns green (this is done in some places, but not in many others). Tragically, it looks like some cities are doing the opposite! Jeff Nolan points out that six US cities have been caught decreasing the length of the yellow light below the legal limits in an effort to catch more drivers running red lights and [increase] revenue."

Grounds to contest?

Would these sneaky moves be grounds to contest the validity of all of the tickets given by traffic cameras in these cities?

Re:Grounds to contest?

You had the choice not to run the light.

Really? Suppose I'm used to yellow lights lasting 6 seconds, and I know I can get through the light in 5 seconds. Now the city changes the yellow light length to 3 seconds, without warning. Do I have a choice then?

I really really hate people who run red lights. But I hate entrapment more.

Re:Grounds to contest?

You had the choice not to run the light.

Really? Suppose I'm used to yellow lights lasting 6 seconds, and I know I can get through the light in 5 seconds. Now the city changes the yellow light length to 3 seconds, without warning. Do I have a choice then?

It's worse than that. If a yellow light is short enough, you will neither have enough time to break, nor to make it through the intersection. If the light is shortened sufficiently, anybody without powerful breaks or who is going a few MPH over the speed limit will have to run the red light.

Re:Grounds to contest?

yes, the problem being that the lights are being set so short, it cannot be managed reasonably.

if the light turns yellow when you've hit the "point of no return", the light will be red before you get out of the intersection, resulting in city_revenue++.

Re:Grounds to contest?

This is a really specious argument. The yellow light could be made 60 seconds long and yet there will still be people who try to make it 59.85 seconds into the yellow and end up running the light because it just changed to red.

If you see the light turn yellow, so can the people behind you and it is totally their fault if they rear-end you.

I understand and agree with you that the learned behavior of most people is to try to gun their engines when the light turns yellow. However, that behavior is still wrong, ultimately, and causes accidents for the reason I stated above.

Re:Grounds to contest?

Yes, this is true. But for certain values of time that the yellow light is on the laws of physics dictate that you cannot stop in time. This is THE POINT of the yellow light. It it to allow people who cannot physically stop their cars in time to clear the intersection before the light turns red.

Re:Grounds to contest?

Jeff Bridges (Starman) would disagree!

"I watched you very carefully. Red means stop, green means go, yellow means go-very-fast."

Re:Grounds to contest?

This is absolutely false. I came to this planet after hearing an invitation from your "Voyager II" spacecraft to come here. I have learned a great deal about your culture and laws by taking the form of a girl's dead husband and driving across the country with her. I watched her very carefully, and picked up what I needed to know to survive on this planet.

From these experiences, I can tell you that the rules of traffic lights are very simple:

Red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast.

Re:Grounds to contest?

If they are reducing the yellow light phase to the point where it is physically impossible to stop before the light turns red, then what?

4. Profit!

That is the whole point of the article. Cities are making a profit doing this. Finally, a use for "4. Profit!" that isn't offtopic.

Re:Grounds to contest?

"This is the Roscoe P Coltrane method of generating revenue through law enforcement"

Hey! Show a little respect. Roscoe has to get his revenue money somehow. He goes through 5 to 10 cop cars a day. You think after a while he'd start to notice those pre-fabricated ramps someone keeps putting all over the roads in Hazard County.

Re:Grounds to contest?

There's a really simple way to eliminate this conflict of interest. All traffic tickets of all kind don't go to the city or county. They go to the state. The state then distributes the money back to the cities/counties based on how heavily trafficked their roads are. How much money came from each isn't even factored in.

Traffic safety laws should be about just that: traffic safety. They shouldn't be a backdoor tax. If we want optimal traffic safety solutions to be chosen, we have to eliminate the financial incentive for suboptimal ones.

Re:Grounds to contest?

Yep. That's one of things under consideration here in Florida. They want to install traffic cameras at more intersections, but a state law prohibits their use to pass out tickets because, currently, a cop must see you running the red.

The insurance industry and several other groups are opposed to eliminating the state law because they think there will be more rear-end collisions resulting from traffic cameras, precisely because studies done in other cities with traffic cameras actually bear this out. People don't want a ticket, so they slam on their brakes to stop, short yellow or no. OTOH, the studies show that there would be fewer T-bone collisions, which are the most common types of accidents involving intersections and amongst the most lethal.

So, they could always just use the fewer "T-bone" accidents as an excuse, and I think this is, in fact, what many cities have done in order to get the traffic cameras.

Welcome to 1984, citizen. Big Brother is watching you.

Re:Grounds to contest?

They HAD them here in North Carolina, ran for about a year. Then someone brought up the fact that our State Constitution says that all traffic fines levied must go DIRECTLY to the schools, 100%. The camera companies were charging 50% royalty for each ticket given, and the counties were keeping the rest. Now there are a host of lawsuits out trying to force them both to give up 100% of the funds to the schools. The cameras are still here, but haven't been in operation for a couple of years.

It's hard for the camera companies to make any money (and pay for the cameras) if you have to give 100% to someone else.

Bastards

I guess I will have to drive faster to make those yellow lights, You know, lights timed for 35 mph are also timed for 70 mph.

Re:Bastards

Your theories intrigue me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter!

(ps: don't forget 105 mph, and 140 mph)

Not news

Quite simply, if they were there for safety, cities would put warning signs up at intersections that have cameras, people would slow down, less people would run lights, and less accidents would occur. I have never seen a warning sign at such an intersection, so their financial motives are pretty clear.

Depends on where you live....

In all the cities near me, there are yellow diamond signs with a picture of an old brownie camera in black in the middle on all approaches to intersections with cameras.

The biggest solution to decreasing accidents at intersections is actually not to increase the amber light and provide more delay before the cross street's green -- the biggest solution is to decrease the number of light cycles per day. The fewer cycles, the fewer accidents per day, even if the same number of accidents occur per cycle.

The trick is to measure the volume of through traffic on both streets per hour on weekdays and weekends and adjust the light timings accordingly, finding the "sweet spot" between causing congestion due to long waits and causing accidents due to short waits.

The long amber and green light delays are only an aid that can help tweak the system once these other factors are accounted for.

Of course, in many cities, the amber light is referred to by drivers as the "go faster" light -- having a long amber actually promotes speeding through intersections in such cities, and results in more pedestrian injuries and deaths.

Re:Depends on where you live....

Your idea is interesting, but do you actually have studies to back it up? At http://www.motorists.org/ [motorists.org], they have links to studies that lenghthing yellow light time is sufficent to lower accident rates.

As the quote goes...

"In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy."

The Six Cities are...

Article is pretty worthless. It contains more hyperlinks than a Slashdot story. Here are the six cities (which are not in the linked article, but a hyperlink), in case you're interested:

1. Union City, CA
2. Dallas, TX
3. Lubbock, TX
4. Nashville, TN
5. Chattanooga, TN
6. Springfield, MO

Actual story is at Motorists.org

After jumping through two blogs (neither of which are the actual story), you'll come to Motorists.org -- the National Motorists Association -- and find the story, dated March 26, 2008 (3 weeks ago). Reading the story, you'll see they cite six different local newspaper articles, some dating back more than a year ago:

http://www.motorists.org/blog/red-light-cameras/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening-yellow-light-times-for-profit/ [motorists.org]

So while indeed this is interesting, it is not particularly "new" nor "news." Cities have been doing this for over a decade, and they occasionally get caught, but more often than not, they do not. They will continue to push for the cameras since they generate virtually "free" revenue (free in the sense of little manpower and little initial investment cost).

Dallas bucks the trend

Dallas recently installed red-light cameras. I'll testify that red-light runners were a major problem here, but I didn't support the cameras because of the potential for abuse. There was concern at City Hall, too, especially from the city's most with-it councilperson, Angela Hunt [angelahunt.com].

To the surprise of just about everyone, the cameras worked! People actually started slowing down in time to stop if the light turned yellow. The city became safer.

But there was an inevitable downside... the cameras' revenue no longer supported their operating cost.

Once again, the unexpected happened. Dallas did NOT tweak yellow light timing to generate more tickets. Instead, they turned off some of the cameras. Apparently, the contract with the third-party camera operator has a clause that reduces the monthly charge from $3,800 per camera to "a fraction" of that cost (blame the Morning News for failing to tell whether that fraction is 1/10 or 9/10). So they're turning some of them off, noting that "most motorists won't realize this and behave as if the cameras are operational."

Which is what we wanted all along.

The city of Dallas is mired in several messes of its own making, resulting in high-profile FBI probes and even a suicide pact [dallasmetropolis.com] between two of its best-known (and most-troubled) behind-the-scenes power brokers. But in this case, the city comes shining through. And the Rangers won a double-header last night, too. Wonders never cease.

More info available from the Dallas Morning News [dallasnews.com] article.

More info NOT available from "theNewspaper.com", a self-described "journal of the politics of driving" that never hesitates to pass on a story of red light camera *abuse* [thenewspaper.com]. I sent a link to the DMN story, but it never showed up. Agenda much?

As a traffic engineer...

...the timing of the Yellow and All-Red intervals are pretty straightforward. The Yellow should be 3-6 seconds long, and is based upon the approach speeds (the higher the speed, the longer the Yellow). The purpose of the Yellow is warn traffic of an impending change in Right-of-Way assignment. On a typical urban roadway with speeds of 30 mph, the Yellow should be 3 seconds long.

The All-Red interval should also be 3-6 seconds long, and should be based upon the geometry and size of the intersection, as well as the approach speeds. The purpose of the All-Red interval is to ensure that the intersection is clear of crossing traffic prior to assigning the Right-of-Way to a side street or pedestrian crossing. To determine the appropriate length of an All-Red interval, you need measure the distance from the stop line to the far side of the intersection (typically past the far crosswalk) and determine the approach speed. 30 m.p.h. = 44 ft/sec, so if the distance from the stop line to the far crosswalk is 88 feet, the appropriate All-Red interval would be 2 seconds. To be conservative, you can also add the length of a typical vehicle (~25 ft.) into the equation.

With that knowledge in hand, you may be able to fight a red light-running ticket if you believe the timing provided for you was too short. Those are the general guidelines across the US. Individual states, counties, and cities may have different criteria, though.

And cameras may even have a negative impact?

According to an article in the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com], not only have red light cameras failed to reduce the number of accidents at intersections where they were installed, but in many cases the number of traffic accidents in those accidents actually increased dramatically.

The analysis shows that the number of crashes at locations with cameras more than doubled, from 365 collisions in 1998 to 755 last year. Injury and fatal crashes climbed 81 percent, from 144 such wrecks to 262. Broadside crashes, also known as right-angle or T-bone collisions, rose 30 percent, from 81 to 106 during that time frame. Traffic specialists say broadside collisions are especially dangerous because the sides are the most vulnerable areas of cars.

The city of Baltimore has been under constant scrutiny for red light camera policies that appear to be unsafe and/or in financial conflict with the public interest. In the report mentioned here [thenewspaper.com], Administrative Judge Keith "One T" Mathews wrote the following summary:

Red light cameras can work to protect the public. Unfortunately, the Baltimore City Red Light Camera Enforcement System (RLCES), as it is presently operated, can be seen as a revenue-producing measure instead of safety-oriented when examined against the following:

1. Contract between Baltimore City and Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS)
2. Contingency vs. Flat-fee Arrangement
3. Unclear Standards for Yellow Light Settings
4. Inconsistent and Short Yellow Light Times
5. Lack of Delay Times/Grace Period
6. Decreased Minimum Threshold Speed Limits
7. Lack of Clear Objectives and Measurement Data (especially accident data)

                      These concerns greatly reduce the credibility of the RLCES and the City governing its operability. Therefore, each of these concerns should be addressed in a timely manner to ensure citizen confidence in the use of the RLCES, the City, the police department, and the judicial body that enforces the citations.[2]

The one thing that red light cameras have always consistently accomplished, however, is revenue generation on a large scale.

Re:How about personal responsibility?

I am colourblind you insensitive clod!

you mean drivers speed through as the light at the top turns grey whilst all the others have to wait at the grey light?