My understanding is that US municipalities do red light cameras like this:
- The city hires a contractor, a for-profit service, to install and operate the cameras. That’s appealing for the city because the contractor deals with the up-front costs. The service gets paid some fraction of each ticket it issues.
- Part of the contract gives the contractor control over the lights themselves.
- The contractor shortens the yellow lights (and may manipulate other timings besides) to ensure more tickets.
People will tell you that red light cameras make roads less safe because they make drivers panicky. I think most drivers have no idea the cameras are there, I think the situation is simpler: Shorter yellows are dangerous. This is literally “Profit > Your Life.”
Traffic cameras should be a good idea. But if they’re operated as a profit center, they probably won’t be.
2 and 3 require CEO jail time in my humble opinion
This isn’t about making traffic safer, this is about making traffic riskier, risking deaths, to make a CEO slightly richer
Jailtime
And if the company does it again, every shareholder goes to jail for an amount of time proportionate to shares owned. Or something, I dunno, I just feel like if we only hold CEOs accountable, companies will start just using the position as fodder so long as it is still more profitable to break the law and accept the punishments.
It’s worse than that. I’m my area, they found that the company that manages the cameras had timed them to film a little longer than the yellow, so they were capturing a small, but significantly higher number of fraudulent violations.
Then when they added cameras to school zone signs, it was found that they activated outside of the official school zones, also giving them a huge profit windfall.
These companies are predatory and parasitic, and EVERY time they do this stuff, they manage to make a mistake that benefits them, at our expense.
Just like car insurance. I agree everyone should have it legally, but then have it controlled by for profit companies is a fucking horrid idea.
I’d apply that to any and all insurance.
Most drivers I talk to, even the most clueless of drivers, seem to be aware of red light and speed cameras. Some people are aware they go up, but once someone gets a ticket mailed a month later by surprise, the news spreads like wildfire. Plus, many devices can locate them. My non-internet dashcam came loaded with their locations, surprisingly. And yes, I’m reasonably sure it has an internal database, because I bought it a couple years after my region banned cameras and removed the equipment.
It’s a good thing to know they’re out there. The goal shouldn’t be profit for the company installing them, nor should it be tracking your movements, but they need to be for safety.
Zero tickets is a desirable outcome, assuming it means drivers stop at red lights properly and it results in fewer pedestrian and cyclist injuries
The world is so broken
Better cut those off polls now and set the standard. You know some dumb ass lib is gonna pay those tickets and eat ramen noodles for a month like some form of self flagellation.
Just another tax on the poor and working class.
Did I miss something here? You could just not drive over a red light. Or are they shit and not working properly?
Its that the fines are fixed. For people who cant afford it an 80$ ticket means something else has to go. Your eating ramen and beans or your going to be late on a bill, and that may have additional fees. To those who can afford it, the 80$ ticket is the cost of a nice dinner you were going to anyway, its not impactful enough to change your behavior.
This is why in some nordic countries serious traffic violations fines are based on a % of your income. Plus taxes are high enough that the governentn does not rely on them as a primary revenue source.
While a reasonable point, it’s not really relevant here. Your argument applies generally to all fines , regardless whether there are red light cameras
Ok, that’s a valid point. I like the concept of income dependent fines. The traffic lights in the USA are flawed in my opinion. In Europe, most of the time, the traffic light is directly behind the stopping line. Easy to see and react. I always found it inconvenient and not as easy when I was driving in the states. But that was only for a week and I was not completely used to them…
Yeah I have to admit to going through a red light about a year ago - it was a massive intersection (my side was 5 lanes) and the lights are misaligned so they’re not in front of the lanes they regulate.
The lights in front of me were green …… but they were for the right turning lanes, and lights for through lanes were off to the left. I can’t argue my fault but at the same time, wtf?
And in before “are you blind?” …… yes I am. The lights did have arrows but the intersection was so big, the lights so far away on the opposite side of all that pavement that I didn’t notice until I was in the intersection.
Anyhow, the point is wtf , why does someone place lights where it increases the possibility of dangerous mistakes?
It’s a tax on crap drivers.
That proportionally hits poor and middle class people harder than rich people.
They literally only set them up in the poor areas in town and not where the rich run red lights continuously.
Oh yeah rich people never travel through cities ever, you’re right, how could I forget?
??? Can’t tell what’s being said here. Sarcasm?They didn’t put them in the areas of the city that the rich people travel through.
I’m not disagreeing with you, but rich people get caught by these traffic cameras as well. The fees just don’t sting as much for them because it’s a smaller percentage of their overall wealth.
It’s insult on top of injury that they target poor and middle class neighborhoods with these cameras.
That is true, but in this case they installed them in what were previously redline districts nearly exclusively, and nowhere near the business or government districts.
It hits people who go through red lights the hardest. No one is forcing anyone to run a red light.
And of those, the punishment is inversely proportional to their income.
Shit happens and this disproportionally punishes poor people harder.
Shit happens? Really? Running a red light at an intersection is shit happens?
You know you convinced me that this poor rich argument is stupid. Run a red light get ticket, don’t run a red light don’t get a ticket.
I don’t recall running more lights depending on my wealth because I don’t like to kill people.
The shit that shouldn’t happen is not auditing any company running these things.
The problem with that logic is it’s already been demonstrated that it can be configured for profit rather than safety. We have no reason to trust these and every reason to expect that any ticket is capricious, possibly invalid, and a long after the fact enforcement so you won’t even be able to remember if you did it
It will not make anyone safer, just reduce trust in law enforcement even more, drive profit to some connected company, and be an unreasonable driving tax that will mostly hit those who can least afford it.
Speaking as someone who
- walks a lot and has had too many close calls from drivers running red lights
- usually stops gradually and in plenty of time for traffic lights, yet has had too many close calls from drivers behind me speeding up
- has had tickets by mail when my ez -pass doesn’t read …… that I haven’t gotten until months later when I can no longer remember what I did, how to fix it, or if I should appeal. And that has sometimes come with late fees from the beginning because they took too long to track me down (in the house where I’ve lived for 20 years)
I was really annoyed with the persons “shit happens” comment. Ok fuck it, shit happens, so do nothing is the wrong answer, and frankly I do not want to get T-boned in an intersection and I am not really concerned if the rich or poor are doing it. Fuck them both if they run red lights.
However, cameras do in fact make it safer. Statistics and studies have shown you have about a 20 percent reduction in side crashes, and of those you have about a 29 reduction in injuries. There also is a side effect where a camera at one light actually causes other intersections to be safer as people are not sure if there are cameras there.
So we know it improves safety.
We also know that several states had to pass additional laws or restrictions because vendors AND cities and counties were trying to force revenue by shortening the yellow light duration. So I can agree with you there, accountability matters.
Yet in two places, cities simply increased the yellow duration, which ALSO improved safety, and nearly as much. I think California passed a law to increase all yellows by another second.
So what is the take away: people are shitty. Poor people, government workers, vendors, rich people, they all have people that suck. I don’t want to be in an accident. I really don’t care what it takes, but I don’t even know where to begin when I am driving in America and realize they a huge portion are rude dipshit morons who only seem to care about themselves. How can the society even function when they just don’t care?
Look at it this way: If there are 2 crap drivers - one makes 500k/year and one makes 35k/year, which one is going to miss paying rent and going into debt due to a $200-$300 traffic ticket?
I’m all for having fines proportional to income rather than a fixed amount. You can also avoid it by not going through red lights.
You can also avoid it by not going through red lights.
When the private red light camera company was in my city, the camera company altered the yellow light timings shortening them when revenue fell so they could give people tickets. The red light camera company denied changing the timings for months. It took community action of someone standing with a stopwatch to catch them in a lie. The red light company was shut down.
Just to add, some of these companies are just assholes. I knew someone who got a ticket due to the fact he hydroplaned across a red light, it was either run the red or spinout of control. He ran the red and a deputy that witnessed the whole thing gave him a write off o the whole situation. Still got a ticket from the camera though, was easy to dismiss but if the cop hadn’t been chill and put it in their system it would’ve been a bitch to dismiss.
This exact same thing happened to someone close to me except it was black ice instead of hydroplaning causing the slide. The red light camera ticket still stuck.
Agreed with not going through red lights, but there are definitely situations where it’s safer to go through a pink light than slam on your brakes. In these cases, you’re still getting punished by a camera.
We could get rid of all red lights if people drove better.
But that’s not reality.
Be careful saying things like this …… you’ll attract all roundabout fans saying it should be a goal to get rid of red lights
Have roundabout fans actually used roundabouts? People don’t know how to use them lol
Yes, I use them all the time. They are fucking amazing.
You don’t even have to use them in a country like the UK that has had them for a long time where people are used to them. Carmel, IN put roundabouts all over their part of Indianapolis (yes, I consider Carmel part of Indy and not its own city), and it took hardly any time for people to get used to them. The people that live their love them for the most part. Plainfield, IN also put roundabouts in more country road areas, and they are also great.
What’s weird is when cities don’t fully commit and put stoplights in the middle of a huge roundabout like in Inverness, Scottland.
I just want to know how accident rates were affected. Red lights don’t exist because they are good in and of themselves, they exist to prevent accidents. This statistic tells me nothing of use, other than a rough estimate of how much money was extracted from the pockets of drivers and funneled through private industry to extract a profit, with the remainder deposited to the police budget.
I support safety initiatives but when private companies are involved and additionally it’s a revenue source, I wonder if they’re using the old chestnut of lowering speed limits without traffic calming and then putting speed cameras, or shortening yellow light duration and putting up red light cameras.
When private company is involved, it necessarily stops being about safety as, done correctly, the number of tickets issued approaches zero. But that means the company isn’t earning money. Do the math.
In case it wasn’t clear from my comment, we are in full agreement.
I was in a panic because I live in Richmond until I realized different state. Red light cameras are illegal in Texas as of 2019.
Those flock cameras could be used to infer speeding based on implausible times between cameras based on distance and speed limits. They won’t do it because then most people would be against them. I could see them selling that information to insurance companies though.
It was a long battle here in Texas that went all the way to the Texas Supreme Court. I think the legal claim was that we have a right to face our accuser and a camera can not take the stand or testify.
Poor writing from the people pushing it then. Usually they get around that with weasel words making it a civil fine rather than anything with legal merit.
Among the consequences are a few outliers racking up tens of thousands in fines for repeat offenses but where there is no legal justification for arresting them or taking their license
Four locations, in case anyone is wondering.
