Dean's World

I remember spending hours at one site laughing my head off at all the speed cameras in the UK that are being burned, cut down, or otherwise destroyed.

Gatso Fires! Coming soon to a highway near you!

Obviously - the only reason this guy was caught ...

Before being destroyed by the bullet - what was the last thing the camera saw?

His mug. Right ? Right?

A friend of mine was hospitalized for a month by a red light runner.

Ha freakin' ha.

Then don't let them do that. Problem solved. Traffic control devices have been studied for decades--the timings that should be used are mostly well-known

There is no civil right to run red lights. But hey, keep laughing about it.

A friend of mine was hospitalized for a month by a red light runner.

Ha freakin' ha.

And a camera would have done what, exactly?

Can he demand a jury trail?

Why, of course! And he also has the right to face his accuser (as soon as his accuser gets out of the repair shop)!

Should be an interesting cross examination, dontcha think?

A .30-06 is a "high-powered rifle?" What's a .50, then, a "super-duper-mega-high-powered rifle?"

I'm surprised it didn't mention that the .30-06 is in the same family of cartridges as the 7.62x39, used in AK-47s by terrorists insurgents around the world.

Okay, so "extended family" (ironically enough...) might be more like it, seeing as they're all in the ".30 cal" family. An AK-47 is just scarier to most people than a Garand or some Remington.

Jon, the science behind signal timings is mostly well-known, but it is still not universally applicable. And as was mentioned: highway (and I would throw police) departments were intentionally shorting yellow times to increase red-light infraction revenue. It is a despicable practice that casts doubt on the entire field of traffic management.

Red light cameras are not a bad thing, especially when they're publicized. Put advance warning signs, make the camera installations obvious. Save them for intersections with known problems. Increase clear times.

The biggest problem with them, tho, is that they are not intelligent, and additionally, people don't know the laws. If your rear bumper clears the stop bar while the light is yellow, you are legally in the intersection and have right of way to clear it. But a camera can be set up to make this a violation, which it should not be. And that's what causes the distrust. These systems have been scarred by deliberate misuse by the greedy agencies who use them as a revenue tool, not a safety tool. And like every other blood from a stone revenue tool, they inspire contempt.

The obvious solution is to

a: not shorten the yellow times, and

b: not make the cameras ticket people who 'almost' make it.

c: But if a cop sees you go through the light even a little late, the law remains the same. Just like pre-camera enforcement.

Most fatal red-light running does not take place in the 1-2 seconds after the light changes, but rather when some moron runs them well after. So, focus on the actual safety concern instead of the revenue generator.

I know, enforcing laws with even a grain of honesty or common sense is tough. Doesn't mean we shouldn't demand it.

Probably the best safety feature is the 'green-light delay' (I don't know the proper term.) The light turns red and the cross traffic light turns green one to two seconds after. It allows 'late yellow' cars and the occaissional idiot to clear the intersection before cross-traffic starts.

Even better is to synchronize the lights on major streets so that traffic that is going the speed limit can clear a large number of lights in a row. This, in my experience*, cuts down on a lot of problems on busy streets. Nothing creates the frustration that leads to red light running like stopping every quarter mile for a traffic light; you start off from a green only to watch the light just ahead turn red. And then repeat.

*Telegraph Road in Wayne County, Michigan.

The light turns red and the cross traffic light turns green one to two seconds after. It allows 'late yellow' cars and the occaissional idiot to clear the intersection before cross-traffic starts.

That depends on local driver habits. In some areas, the drivers just learn that they have a longer window to squeak by.

*Telegraph Road in Wayne County, Michigan.

Is that road incredible, or what? For all Wayne County's problems, they got that road right. One time I went all the way from down 94 way to way up north towards Farmington Hills (or whatever the suburb is up in there) without a single red light.

Mike, it's 'all-red' time, and that's the point of it. However, sometimes the knowledge that there is all-red time encourages people to run the red lights. This was observed in Baltimore City, and led to the removing of all-red time at signals within the city.

As for synchronization, it's very difficult to get to work in the way you want. Yes, YOUR street can be synchronized, but that means that streets in the opposite direction cannot, and that cross streets have significant issues. That's for a network of one-way streets. For two-way streets, it's nearly impossible to get meaningful synchronization unless the peak direction travel is so heavy that it's worth the huge wait times introduced on the opposing direction.

Traffic engineering is one of the things I really like to do, but don't get too much chance to. And sometimes it feels like this.

Actually, it's just the result. Engineers love to give everyone what they want. But as in nearly every other part of life, you can't give everyone everything they want all the time. Or even hardly any of the time. So you end up spreading the pain around because it's the only thing that satisfies most of the design requirements.

The 'not annoying them a lot' thing IS part of traffic engineering. You can see it in the eternal struggle about traffic calming. "We want a STOP sign", "We want a traffic light", "We want speed bumps", "We want police enforcement". Every single one of those things has a definite counter-productive effect. Unwarranted STOP signs increase the chances that people will run *any other* STOP signs. Unwarranted traffic lights increase delays for all with almost no benefit except to make people feel better. Speed bumps significantly increase fire truck response time, while having almost no effect on the average speed of the speeders (they go faster in between to make up for the time they lost). Police enforcement makes other roads less safe, because the police are busy.

And red light cameras are the same thing. They could have been such a great tool, but people just didn't understand them. I remember people saying 'If the point is to catch people running red lights, why put signs up warning them?' Because the point isn't to CATCH red light runners. It's to STOP people from running the red light in the first place! And as people have said, it's not the guy who just squeaks through on a stale yellow light that hits and hurts someone. It's the guy who blows through the full-red while traffic is going through the intersection. But the way they used them has annoyed people so much that we applaud guys who vandalize them. And it's sad that it came to that. And I lay 100% of the blame on the greedy twits who used them for revenue.