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Comment by notacoward | Hacker News Reader

I think an even better application of this technology would be to catch people who aren't stopping at signs/lights, or not yielding at merges. Radar-equipped signs can handle the speeding case fairly well, but are useless in these other - and often more dangerous - cases.

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Red light cameras increase rear-end collisions as well as injury because people would rather lock up their brakes one car length before the intersection than get a ticket.

I haven't seen any information on the effect of cameras at merging sites, though.

At least here in the UK, there are sensible guidelines to ensure you don't do that. For example, if the light is amber (turning from green to red) and you are so close to the line that braking would be hazardous, you should carry on. A system as sophisticated as the one presented here could surely take speed and stopping distance into account. And even apart from all that, I'd rather have one car rear-ending another that's braked too harshly, at slow speed, than a car careering through the light, much faster.

I wasn't suggesting anything that triggers red lights or leads directly to a citation. Just gathering the data would often be useful, to drive design of intersections and allocation of other resources in a quantitative way.

Also, if people aren't maintaining a safe distance from the car in front of them, then that's useful information too. So is video of people illegally using their celphones while driving, which this technology could also provide.

Well if you rear end someone you will be cited for it 99% of the time.

But surely your answer to something that quantifiably increases injury rates isn't "who cares it's their own fault" is it?

But since you asked for a citation: http://bfy.tw/4343

Putting words in someone else's mouth is a tactic commonly used by those who can only formulate stupid statements. Of course I care about things that increase or decrease injury rates. That's why I would like to encourage safer behavior. You should haved added "debunked" to your snarky citation, and you might have found this.

http://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/red-light-camera-myths-deb...

Also, as I said, if people are tailgating then that's a separate problem that can also be addressed by this technology. It's insane to say that we shouldn't discourage one dangerous behavior because of some other equally-addressable dangerous behavior. People respond to the knowledge that they're more likely to be caught when they do something wrong or stupid. An actual police officer issuing citations for exactly these offenses is effective, but costly. Having the information about frequency of offense at different locations allows those scarce resources to be allocated to greatest effect. What's your problem with that?

Everything I have seen says that they can increase the rate of crashes but decrease the rate of injuries, because they change the types of accidents which occur, and rear ending is much less dangerous than T-boning. Example analysis:

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/05049/

That one actually shows roughly net zero change in total crash rate, but a decent decrease in the injury rate.

Yes! If not to catch violators, at least to collect data for use in enforcement. In cities and towns with lots of pedestrians, the stop sign case is key. People check for other cars by habit, but often overlook pedestrians waiting to cross at a stop sign and put them at risk.

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