Cecil certainly missed the boat on this column. Apparently he hasn?t been reading any newspapers or automobile related periodicals (Car and Driver and Motortrend, most notably) who have been discussing/exposing the use and abuse of automatic cameras for ticketing of red-light violators. There are companies marketing these systems to counties and cities, under the premise that they will increase revenues and improve auto safety. Given the relatively small number of accidents related to ?squeezing the lemon till it bleeds? the increased safety rewards are moot; these systems are created to bring in more money to the county and city in which they are used. Part of the methodology to increase violations is shortening of the yellow light. As many of the companies that are marketing these systems are working on a contingency basis, they have a vested interest in increasing tickets and will play with the settings to bring up the number of tickets. Viola! A self-fulfilling prophecy, more money for the county, more money in the pockets of the camera company, less money in our pockets.
Yes, however … I’m not sure that excuses reposting it now without updated information. That is particularly true when the subject matter has been a recent bone of contention.
It should be noted that the statistics on red-light running are very different from the statistics on yellow to red-light running. It has been demonstrated that when the yellow-light time increases, the number of violators at these automated intersections goes down (as common sense would dictate) conversely, when the yellow-light time decreases, violations increase and $ to the city increases.
Of course, I am merely a peon … a cog in the machine … I’m sure Cecil has much greater resources than my modest desktop computer and could do a much more thorough discussion than the paragraph he wrote in 1973 (and reposted today sans updates).
Cecil mentions the Walk/Don’t Walk signs. Has anyone else noticed the Walk sign not being anywhere near long enough to let them cross the street? I don’t think I walk terribly slowly, but if I start walking at a normal or fairly brisk pace, when the Walk sign starts, I will usually be only 2/3 of the way across the street when the Don’t Walk sign comes on. So I usually ignore them and go by the green & red lights for traffic.
I liked the scene in, I think, Superman III, where the someone messes up the traffic lights, and the Walk & Don’t Walk men get so confused and upset that the bottom one climbs up to the top one’s light, and starts a fist fight.
From what I understand, the flashing Don’t Walk means that you can still walk if you are in the intersection, but you aren’t supposed to start crossing if you are back at the curb. It’s sort of like a yellow light. Steady Don’t Walk means that you are not to enter the intersection on foot.
One intersection that I frequently drive through actually has a timer that counts down how much time you have left to cross the street once the light switches from Walk to flashing Don’t Walk. I really like this feature, even as a driver, because it gives me an indication of how much time the light is going to remain green before it switches to yellow.
I’m not very slow either, and I rarely make it across a street before the Don’t Walk starts flashing, especially if it’s one of those places where you have to push the button to turn on the Walk signal (they really aren’t expecting many pedestrians there in the first place.) But, then again, they don’t mean for you to fully cross before Don’t Walk starts flashing, anyway.
You know, where he really missed the boat (in 1973 or now) was in answering the actual bloody question: are yellow lights getting shorter? He mentions the guide to timing the lights, but does not research older versions of the guide to see if the guidelines CHANGED or not. Sloppy.
When I was researching California law to defend a red-light violation I was accused of, I noticed a number of those links (above) concerning shortening yellow lights.
I was accused, through an automated red-light camera, of running a red light by a fraction of a second, when the yellow light length on the intersection I was accused of running was one second shorter than other equally sized San Francisco intersections on the same street in the same neighborhood.
I researched the law, however, and found that this wouldn’t directly help me. There’s not minimum yellow light length in California law, and there isn’t even a required yellow light. If you enter an intersection when the light is red, you’re guilty. They could legally go straight from green to red.
In the end, the case was dismissed because there was no proof the person driving the car was actually me.
Another defense that I considered, was that there’s no proof it wasn’t a blinking red light (perhaps because of a loose bulb). It’s legal to enter an intersection with a blinking red light. The single snapshot picture only showed that the light was red at two instants, but not that it was continuously red, as the red-light running law requires.
Right, so they mean exactly the same thing, no? Unless you’re claiming that a steady Don’t Walk means to stop even if you’re in the middle of the street.
Just to clarify, Cecil pays no attention to which of the older columns are being rerun. Some weeks Ed handles that, some weeks, lower staff. Cecil is not being paid to rewrite old columns, unless he decides to do a real live official update.
