Where I live you're safe from the red light camera if your front-two tires are over the white line when the light changes to red. Sounds like in Oregon you're only safe if you're out of the intersection when it turns red, which seems entirely absurd, especially for tourists / newcomers to the area. How am I supposed to know how quickly your yellow light changes on this street?
You are supposed to be an income source for American Traffic Solutions, Redflex Traffic Systems, and the city in question. It isn't about safety anymore. It is about money.
Cities are known across the country to make yellow timing extra short to increase the money. https://www.motorists.org/blog/6-cities-that-were-caught-sho...
If red light cameras were about safety, the addition of warning signs "Red Light Camera Intersection" ahead of the lights would drastically reduce the amount of dangerous behavior.
That isn't how the incentives work, though. Instead they hide them, throwing away the powerful deterrent they've created, in an attempt to make money from the unwary.
It was also an intersection that had tons of accidents from people running the light before the camera was installed.
https://saferstreetsla.org/679/case-studies-longer-yellow-li...
Also increasing yellow light duration is significantly cheaper than contracting out a network of cameras to a vendor who takes over half the revenue from each ticket.
It's cheaper for society, yes. It's much more expensive if you're the government notionally "paying" for that contract. It's paid out of revenues you didn't have before.
The idea is to stop people running red lights everywhere, not just at red light locations.
If you run red lights, you should be banned from driving just like if you speed. The roads are unsafe enough as it is.
If it was about safety, it would only hit people when the crossing traffic light turned green.
Care to tell that to Amazon or Wal-Mart?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-...
https://newrepublic.com/article/146540/amazon-thriving-thank...
This is quite implausible, of course, which is why it's never explicitly argued, but the entire criticism falls apart without that assumption.
It's interesting you take the position that Walmart is helpless to pay its workers more, as if they were some mom and pop operation.
As always, I'm never sure which side of Hanlon's Razor to fall on, since the level of stupidity and the level of malice required for either explanation are off the charts
Most employers of relatively unskilled labor pay poverty wages because they can get the labor they are seeking at that price, and they haven't identified ways to get sufficiently better returns paying more to justify higher pay.
> and what can one of the biggest (or biggest) private employers in America do about it?
Why should they?
I'd rather just tax capital earnings as income, tax high-end income more, and fund a UBI than expect employers to act irrationally as public benefit agencies.
I think being able to reinvest profits into your own company is a great thing to be able to do. But I don't believe it's ethical to pay people little in order to reinvest in your own company and certainly not without the input of the workers affected. When Amazon's own workers are unable to do the very same thing -- reinvesting their own profits into themselves -- then Amazon's workers are certainly fleeced by a private corporation along the way.
Low wages are just the starting point here; any member of a community which is receiving less than a living wage also needs support from the community. Sometimes that support comes from friends and family or churches. Often it comes directly from your tax money.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing to send my tax money to help people though. I'm absolutely saying that I shouldn't have to. Large corporations reap millions and billions from their own employees. Why, exactly, is it fair that they should profit at the expense of the actual real humans doing their work?
I think I understand what you are saying, but let me make sure. Are you saying you think corporate tax should be funding people in need and not personal tax (whether it property, sales, income, etc.)? To be honest, in my original comment I didn't really think about where the tax should come from, but I think I do agree with you. I do think something like a universal income could allow corporations more freedom as they'd be freed from the burden of feeding, clothing, housing, and healing an entire nation.
While I think a universal income is a laudable goal, I do not think our economy is automated enough to support it.
You don't think corporations should share the burden of feeding, clothing, housing, and healing the nation in which it reaps its profits?
I see. I live in an heavy income tax state, so I think that is why my mind went there initially.
> You don't think corporations should share the burden of feeding, clothing, housing, and healing the nation in which it reaps its profits?
Oh I do, I just don't want those things connected to employment. I am not comfortable with the current coupling of health care and employment, but corporations paying adequate taxes to fund these services offered to all I'm all for.
Thanks for the reasonable conversation, by the way. This thread has helped me learned more and think about different viewpoints on this topic.
What if an obstruction appears in the road - a pedestrian or a u-turning car? Are you just meant to plow into them?
I'm guessing you're supposed to get the robot-generated penalty, get your court date, take the day off of work, and plead your blindingly-obvious case to the court.
..... /or/ they could change to make the offense fire if you enter the intersection illegally instead of exit "illegally". :-\
Completely nutty.
"London green" we call it.
In Germany there is a 1 second grace period after the light switches to red. And apparently, even if your tires crossed the stop line after the 1st second, you will not get a ticket if the photo series shows you did not move across the intersection.
Urban rumors are that some taxi drivers used this to empty the (physical) film rolls on the cameras by slowly rolling forward and back across the line past the 1 second rule. I guess this does not work so well with digital storage.
Indeed. For many years, there was a nasty traffic light in the Stuttgart city center (at the Main Station) which was guarded by a traffic camera. It was positioned inside a very sharp turn, and it was very difficult to notice that the light was changing to red if you were already on a position of the road which was too close to the intersection to see the large overhead traffic lights, but too far away to see the small traffic light at the side of the road. I remember my father sometimes only coming to a stop a meter past the traffic light, which always triggered the camera. It never resulted in a ticket, though, as he was standing and not moving.
This is also the reason why it's never a good idea to flip off the camera. A court decided that looking at pictures of people showing the finger would have an emotional impact on the person analyzing them later so the fine in this case is much greater.
Mr. Jarlstrom's wife may have been an outlier for the hardware and software that calculates the tickets. But, overall, the system is catching folks who are breaking the law.
Reducing the accidents (injuries and damages) is better than catching more people.
Well then maybe they should increase the time available for a left turn instead of using it as an opportunity to collect revenue.
Here in Indiana you’re supposed to stop on yellow if you can safely.
That’s hard to judge for law enforcement but an easy rule for drivers to follow, if they would in fact do so. Doesn’t matter then how long the yellow light is.
https://codes.findlaw.com/in/title-9-motor-vehicles/in-code-...
50 mph is 264000 feet per hour. This converts to 73.3 feet per second. 300' means you need to signal about four seconds before turning or changing lanes.
When I turn off of rural highways with 50+ mph speed limits, I signal about the same time I let off the gas to start slowing for the turn. Braking is at least a few seconds later, turning is well after that.
One of the challenges of traffic planning is that people will do what feels comfortable and is working; it’s not really worth writing laws to force them out of that unless there’s an oil crisis or a municipal revenue crisis.
First, signage is generally awful in Indiana. I often don’t know that I’m turning 300’ in advance.
Second, I’d prefer a rule that’s simpler to follow but still (I think) achieves the same effect for those sharing the road: start signaling at least one second before you decelerate.
Third, treating this as a money-making operation for the police is perverse.
> In rural areas, the Junction assembly should be installed at least 400 feet in advance of the intersection. In rural areas, the minimum distance between a Junction assembly and either a Destination sign or an Advance Route Turn assembly should be 200 feet.
INDOT conveniently doesn't comply with this paragraph. You often only get a sign at the intersection itself with no advance. You're left guessing where the intersection actually is and when to slow down and signal.
https://codes.findlaw.com/in/title-9-motor-vehicles/in-code-...
A yellow light only indicates that the light is changing to red, and that the right of way is ending (as marked by a red light). There is nothing that states what a driver must/supposed-to do when facing a yellow light.
Assuming a driver is obeying all other traffic laws, a driver is lawfully allowed to enter an intersection on a yellow light, regardless of whether they have the time to stop or not.
In most (all?) US jurisdictions, drivers are taught that if the light is yellow, you should stop if you can do so safely.
Since it difficult to remember which in which jurisdictions this applies, I always make sure to stop for yellow if I can do so safely.
This not being the rule where I was from (Virginia), I stopped by the DMV and picked up the handbook to see what else might be different, only to find that the rule was essentially the same as in Virginia (must enter intersection before it turns red).
It's not explicitly illegal to change lanes in an intersection but it is often unsafe.
Iowa
Michigan
Mississippi
Nebraska
New Jersey
Oregon
Virginia
Wisconsin
1: www.jarlstrom.com/PDF/Exhibit_1_FINAL_An_investigation_of_the_ITE_formula_and_its_use_R14.pdf
In practice, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on_red#North_America everywhere in the US has had right turn on red unless otherwise signed since 1980. Except for New York City, apparently...
Thanks.
Does it matter? If you're a tourist/newcomer, simply don't try to make it through a yellow light just because you can. If you can stop, do so.
In Oregon, it's not absurd to be safe only when out of the intersection. As a "restrictive yellow" state, the yellow cycle time includes the time to completely clear the intersection. IOW, the yellow cycle time is longer than it would be otherwise.
Yes, without understanding that the yellow times are longer, it would seem absurd.
That may get you rear-ended or barely so, because the driver behind may be accustomed to the usual traffic of the area going through, and perhaps he may be the one who should stop, but is not expecting you to.
When light turns red, it does not mean other light in the crossing turns green immediately. At the crossing for sometime all the lights should be red, to cover the case of signal change after a vehicle has entered the crossing.
As a driver, you are not supposed to know this, nor should you base your driving based on this information.
It's simple: if you have enough distance to stop, you stop[1].
The yellow light is supposed to be timed so that people who don't have the distance to stop when going the speed limit would have enough time to legally pass the intersection[2].
The engineer's case (and many others) is that the lights are adjusted specifically so that this does not happen, i.e. people on a certain stretch of a road have are forced to cross on red if they don't decelerate unsafely.
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[1] Your stopping distance only depends on your speed, road conditions, and reaction time.
[2]http://redlightrobber.com/red/links_pdf/Derivation-of-the-Ye...
The problem is, I've never known if that means entered the crosswalk or passed through the crosswalk and entered the rest of the intersection.