Shorter yellow lights boost red-light camera revenue | Hacker News Reader

Shorter yellow lights boost red-light camera revenue

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15 pointscwan17 comments

The minimum yellow light duration is regulated to 3s by the Federal Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

In CA, the timing is additionally required to be no shorter than the Caltrans Traffic Manual, which sets a higher minimum time depending on the speed of the road.

If you get a ticket and the yellow is shorter than that, you have a very good case for getting it thrown out.

I would go further and state that this seems like it could be borderline criminal negligence due to the inherent safety issues.

"The annals of capitalism are full of ingenious money-making ruses. ... There may, however, now be a new capitalist champion of gall. According to AlterNet, some of the more enterprising and caring cities of the United States have used their almost limitless brains to increase the revenues they accrue from red-light cameras."

For what definition of "capitalism" does the above quotation make sense?

Maybe if "incorporated" cities are thought of (private) corporations rather than as government. That's my best stretch. I suspect, however, that the actual explanation is that capitalist is a synonym for bad/evil on AlterNet.

Great example of a terrible incentive structure. Obviously, no city should rely on tickets for revenue, but I imagine it is more politically viable to increase ticket revenue than property tax revenue.

Traffic laws and enforcement can be designed for:

-1. Safety

-2. Revenue collection

Pick one of two. I think most American authorities picked the wrong one, personally.

And in some circumstances it becomes obvious which one they picked:

"City Dumps Money Losing Traffic Cameras" http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/30/3054.asp

Pick one of two

Why? Couldn't you have 2/3 of one and 1/3 of the other? For instance, enforcing speed limits on a busy road near an elementary school? Not only do you get to write a lot of tickets, but you also slow down traffic, making it safer for pedestrians.

In this case, the fact that shorter yellow lights are increasing revenue, means more people are running red lights, which significantly increases the chance of a collision.

Optimizing for revenue collection is designing the rules to be easily broken. This does not enhance safety.

If you want to bust a lot of speeders by a school, you must first have a lot of people speeding by a school. The best way to do this is to have a nice, straight, uncontrolled road that's clearly safe to drive at a faster speed than posted. That will encourage speeding and thus ticket revenue when you set up a speed trap.

If you are more concerned about the safety of children crossing the road, you will do things to discourage people from actually driving fast. You'd make the road curvy, make T-intersections 3-way stops, put in speed bumps, add crossing guards, or use whatever combination of a variety of techniques makes sense for that road in order to make drivers go slower.

It's a lot easy to pull people over on wide and open roads, though. If you were designing a traffic area around an elementary school for maximum safety, you'd narrow the streets and do a lot of things that probably get in the way of setting up speed traps--especially the easily concealed speed traps cops are so fond of.

I remember in Manila (Philippines) there was a light at an intersection that turned red in probably half the time any other light did. What's more, crossing the intersection required crossing 6+ lanes of traffic, so frequently you could enter the intersection with a green light but still end up traversing it mostly when the light was red. There was a gaggle of 10 or so cops standing at the other side at all times, issuing tickets. If you gave them a disapproving look though sometimes they'd just wave you through anyway, looking a little embarrassed at their scheme.

This is just crooked. They increase the risk of driving fatalities, just to increase revenue. All because they are scared to increase taxes because it's not politically convenient!

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure there are laws in place (at least in some states) that provide a minimum time for a light to shine yellow before going to red. Basically, if the stop light has a yellow light that is short of the minimum, you can fight a ticket for running a red right. Not sure on the particulars here, but just something to consider.

Most people don't assume that this sort of thing could be against a law, since it's a government doing it to them; they just glower and pay the tickets.

Surprise, surprise...

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