Red light cams won't snap if you go through at yellow, but man you clearly ran a red there...
I was suprised when I saw my first one go off on some guy who did that like only a month ago. I would personally love to see more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by habitat
To you two, read this. Red-Light Cameras Increase Accidents: 5 Studies That Prove It
You should take into consideration the level of congestion, if they put a red light on ever intersection in the middle of nowhere, everyone will be running it and accidents will increase. Some cities in Europe have no traffic lights at all and everyone drivers more carefully knowing that. Just open your mind a bit. |
That's the argument that says doctors are responsible for death because the higher the number of doctors, the more deaths in the population....
Solution: fire all the docs!
Edit: Sorry, but as an academic, I can't stand articles like the one you posted. It's completely over the top. Without actually doing research themselves, or thoroughly backing sources up, the site posts lose arguments taken out of a context that changes the meaning when separated from other facts to prove a new point, usually political. I could also find at least as many sites backing up the use of red light cameras and its safety benefits.
Here's one:
City of Toronto: Transportation Services - Red Light Cameras
Unfortunately that is more an editorial piece itself rather than providing facts. While it looks official, the last paragraph really shows you that it is an opinion page on a review, similar to the one you provided.
Edit 2:
I looked at the articles a bit more... and here are some notes I made:
Article 1 from that link was about an article in 1995. Without even reading the actual article you know that its usefulness is limited. This could be from a pioneer study into red light cameras, and one would expect its results to be more skewed.
Article 2 was quoted to say
"After cameras were installed, rear-end crashes increased for the entire six-jurisdiction study area… After controlling for time and traffic volume at each intersection, rear-end crash rates increased by an average of 27% for the entire study area.”
in the actual article it shows that only in one area did crashes actually increase - Arlington, and only for rear crashes (due to another factor not anticipated - that people don't look forward lol)
“After cameras were installed, total crashes increased.”
again, while it increased in 1 city, 2 others had decreased, and red light accidents (its target) had decreased significantly. The article itself also says "It is therefore not surprising that when the comprehensive crash costs for rear-end and angle crashes are monetized, the cameras are associated with an increase in crash costs in some jurisdictions and a net reduction in comprehensive crash costs in other jurisdictions. When these results are aggregated across all six jurisdictions, the cameras are associated with a net increase in comprehensive crash costs. However, when considering only injury crashes, if the three fatal angle crashes that occurred during the after period are removed from the analysis (the only fatalities that occurred during the study out of 1,168 injury crashes), then the cameras were associated with a modest reduction in the comprehensive crash cost for injury crashes only.". This puts what was said in the NMA article into a whole new light.
“The impact of cameras on injury severity is too close to call.”
Really taken out of context
“Based only on the study results presented herein and without referencing other studies, the study did not show a definitive safety benefit associated with camera installation with regard to all crash types, all crash severities, and all crash jurisdictions.”
I however disagree that this is what the study really concludes since the study says: "These results cannot be used to justify the widespread installation of cameras because they are not universally effective.
These results also cannot be used to justify the abolition of cameras, as they have had a positive impact at some intersections and in
some jurisdictions. The report recommends, therefore, that the decision to install a red light camera be made on an intersection-byintersection
basis. In addition, it is recommended that a carefully controlled experiment be conducted to examine further the impact
of red light programs on safety and to determine how an increase in rear-end crashes can be avoided at specific intersections."
The conclusion I get from the primary source suggests that it can go both ways, and thus there is a benefit to its target. - once again training bad drives to realize that people will stop at a red light is another matter .
I stopped there for tonight.