Quote:
Originally Posted by dontpanic
Its a little tougher on some of the camera intersections. They have studies and graphs that show that as they shorten the yellow interval revenue goes up. In some cases they are able to get juridictions to change the timing of the intersection. the redlight camera compaines recommend short yellow and a delayed green for oncoming/crossing traffic as the ideal.
It is controversial whether they have improved safety at all as they quote statistics that include the delayed green (which is probably what reduces collisions more than the threat of a ticket). the companies keep about half the take so it can add up fast. they keep it a non-moving violation due to the enforcement issues mentioned by others and to encourage people to just pay and not fight it. they even have studies of how much they can charge in each area; they try to get as much as they can without hitting a threshold where people start to fight their tickets.
its a bizarre form of taxation by a for profit public private partnership that probably needs a bit more scrutiny but in the end isnt much different than small infamous cities that vary speed limits on thoroughfares to generate speeding ticket income (Emporia VA)
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Well that's fucking terrible. I guess that explains why yellow lights were so short when I lived in Boulder (they seemed to have a lot of red-light cameras). I still never did get ticketed but those lights made winter driving scary as all fuck (you're moving at normal driving speeds towards the intersection, light goes yellow and gives you about two or three seconds to stop... not fun when there isn't much grip or you're driving an old Land Rover... definitely not fun when both conditions are true at the same time.
Still, I can see why people would want red light cameras. When I lived in Denver I lived near a busy intersection of two, four-lane avenues. Every day I'd cross that intersection walking to school and I'd see people running the shit out of red left-turn lights... sometimes you'd see the light go red and 2-3 more cars would just amble on through as though nothing was out of the ordinary. You basically had to just sit on the curb for the first 5-6 seconds of the "walk" signal to avoid getting run down by morons. Even after a student was killed at the same intersection by a red-running SUV nothing was done to either adjust the timing of the lights to alleviate the massive backup of cars that always accumulated at the intersection or dissuade people from running the reds. Meanwhile the city continued to pay some corporation to place speed camera vans in deserted construction zones at night so they could try and illegally extort money from people doing 35mph on well-lit, sparsely-trafficked, ruler-straight 4-lane roads.
'Murka.