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Comment by GFischer | Hacker News Reader

At least over here, traffic lights fail and turn off on their own, no need for hackers :) . Now, fixing them (for example setting up a "green wave"... hmm that could be a more interesting use :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_wave

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I'd like to see the local lights reprogrammed to follow the legal guidelines instead of short yellows to maximize traffic ticket revenues.

Consider yellow to mean "stop", and the length of it becomes irrelevant and the roads become a little bit safer.

For each given stop light, speed limit, and vehicle configuration, there is a rubicon that is crossed where it is impossible to stop before entering the intersection. Set up your camera and creep the yellow light time down past this limit and profits just start rolling in.

Exactly. There's uncountable number of stories easily google-able across the country where intersections with red light cameras magically coincidentally have their yellow light interval dropped by 1/4 to 1/3 vs intersections without red light cameras, to increase revenue.

Yep.

And then the red light cameras start magically getting bullet holes in them.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/dec/12/police-man-shot-cam...

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/08/shoot_out_the_red_l...

You should also glance in your rear-view mirror to verify that the car behind you follows the same rule before you commit to stopping. Simple rules about traffic safety usually need a little tweaking IRL...

No. Yellow tells you to go faster.

a fellow Italian driver?

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