Study: Chicago red light cameras provide few safety benefits
chicagotribune.com
chicagotribune.com
A better solution would be enforcing a sane minimum yellow light timing on camera intersections. Shortening the yellow to the point where the normal traffic sometimes brakes hard to avoid entering the now yellow, soon to be red camera intersection is the reason for this increase in rear-ends.
Per the article, this is something Chicago was guilty of, in addition to placing the cameras in areas that had no problematic history of accidents.
The real problem with these things is that they are used as another way to milk money out of the populace, rather than as a way to modify behaviour and improve safety.
These cameras ( and short lights ) are something that really really annoy me as a motorcyclist. I can stop fast any time but the SUV-clad soccer mom texting behind me probably wont. I sometimes find myself dropping a gear and hammering through a yellow I could easily stop for because of this.
/rant
The best solution for the people involved shifting money from the people to an entity that installs and maintains those cameras. So, to get there, you need some method for moving money from the people to said entity.
Let's say those cameras decrease property damage/hospital costs/costs of lost time by an amount of X, what is against taxation of the total costs of that are smaller than X?
I’m guessing this was a problem before red-light cameras:
— What? What did I do?
— You failed to stop at a red signal.
— The light was yellow, sir.
Elwood Blues and Trooper Daniel, Blues Brothers (1980)
Still I do think many are in place only for revenue, much like speed limit cameras. I would rather see red light cameras than speed limit cameras, however I want the later to come only under specific circumstances with full public accounting. I think if they really want to sell us on safety it should all go to charity.
I know a couple of signals that are there to just make people slow down, and they work even if a lot of us know that there's no radar there.
Generally, the psychology of the timing matters. Most of the intersections that I see people crash aggressively are busy intersections and have lights that take forever to cycle. So, there is a huge time penalty for missing the light (something like 4-5 minutes).
If you cycle the light faster, it may let fewer cars through, but it tamps down the aggressiveness with which people are willing to crash the light.
This is easily solved. For example, intersection just outside my window [1] has LED timers next to traffic lights, but the countdown is blanked (turned off) for the last five seconds, not to encourage reckless speeding.
The blanking appears to work just fine, judging by the way the traffic flows. I pass the intersection daily, both by car and on foot.
[1] in a mid sized city in Poland
Ignoring for a moment that T-bone crashes are likely to produce much more severe injuries than someone crumpling up the rear of another car, this should suggest that we instead need ways to monitor motorists for keeping proper distance and attentiveness.
The solution can't be to stop monitoring for one offense because it causes incompetent motorists to cause more offenses of another sort.
"Scheinfeld said in an interview last week that the city's safety claims are based on "more basic," nonscientific comparisons of crash statistics"
> "But the Tribune study, which accounted for declining accident rates in recent years as well as other confounding factors, found cameras reduced right-angle crashes that caused injuries by just 15 percent."
It also includes the analysis that revelation calls for (the balance of severity and incidence rate):
> "The economic analysis examined the extent to which the increase in rear-end crashes negates the benefits for decreased right-angle crashes," the 2005 study concluded. "There was indeed a modest aggregate crash cost benefit of RLC systems."
which is why "The Tribune researchers also suggested that Chicago could reap much better results if it shut down about 40 percent of its cameras, located in about 75 intersections throughout the city where crash rates were lower to begin with."
But it's crap for generating more revenue, which is quite often seen as more important.
That said, for the most part, I feel red light cameras are a racket.
Retrospectively, I guess we should have been better about sharing our findings.
To reduce if not halt such incidents, we should simply build crossing gates as at railroad crossings. When the light is turning yellow, a gate lowers, with flashing red lights and clanging bells. When the light cycles to green, the gate lifts. Problem solved.
Alternatively, hire more traffic cops to enforce the laws. It costs money, but the carnage on the roads calls for some kind of a real fix and not just a cosmetic patch like cameras that merely bring in more revenue.
Bookmarklets, referer spoofing and other improvements left as exercise for the reader.