Thanks city for shortening the yellow lights!! (Red light cams)

The BBQ Pit
1

The city I live in has shortened their yellow lights.

Seriously, in the past two weeks, I’ve ran three red lights. The damn yellow lights turn red right when I’m in the middle of the intersection.

I KNOW how to time yellow lights. In 25 years of driving I’ve probably ran two or three in my whole life. Now, in the past two weeks I get three?? WTF!!

I know my driving habits haven’t changed. So it must be the damned lights.

This is Bull Shit!

I’m sending an e-mail to my local news station. It’s a long shot but maybe I can spark their interest.

2

If you were already past the line, I don’t think you ran the red lights.

3

If you’re in the intersection when the light changes, you didn’t run it.

But there have been documented instances of yellow light shortening. Not for the sake of safety, mind you, shortened yellows are more dangerous.

4

Whew, I feel better now. I’ve been nervously checking my mailbox every day for the past week. Waiting for that letter from the DOT to arrive.

Hopefully, it wont from what you guys are saying.

5

I’d still be making some calls. As far as I know by law, they have to have the yellow light set to a certain length and no shorter. If it is too short, then there may be a lot of people that got tickets illegally. :eek:

6

I’m outraged with you, Shakes. Out here, the lights used to be 5 seconds from yellow to red. When the cameras got mounted, they changed to 3 seconds. We know this because a lot of the club members are retired and were able to ride around and time the yellow lights. We wrote letters and complained that we thought it was just another way make money.

The response we got was that we should stop when the light turns yellow.

The shorter yellow lights caused people to just slam on their brakes, even if they were over the line. A lot of accidents happened because of this. Outrage happened, and the lights got put back to 5 seconds. I’m guessing that one of the local Big Fish in a Little Pond got hit or hit someone.

7

All too often red light cameras are more about money than safety.

There is a growing body of evidence that accidents increase when red light cameras are installed. Just google on it.

8

Then why not just have red and green lights?

9

Wouldn’t it make more sense, safety wise, to extend the time between the change from red to green (in other words a longer period where all sides of an intersection are red)? Oh that’t right; that wouldn’t bring in revenue.

That being said, people do need to commence the stopping procedure when the light turns yellow, unless of course they are already in the intersection. No offense to the OP, but if you find yourself continually running red lights, well, why do you keep trying to beat the yellow?

10

Sometimes it’s a judgment call. Couple of weeks ago I was approaching an intersection when the light turned yellow. It was raining. I knew I’d have to hit the brakes hard to stop completely before the crosswalk and only then if the street was dry. With the pavement being wet I figured there there was a good chance I’d skid or fishtail (I drive a front-wheel drive pick-up) if I hit the brakes hard so I chose to drive through the intersection even though the light turned red as I drove under it. Luckily no other drivers jumped the gun and pulled out in front of me. No cops around either. :slight_smile: (Don’t know if they would have bought my explanation even though it was the truth…)

11

As noted in the linked article, my home town of Lubbock, Texas, had yellow lights that were too short at 8 of 12 intersections with the cameras. The local news mentioned that the standard recommended by NHTSA is one-tenth of a second for every MPH of the speed limit, so a 40 MPH stretch of road should have a yellow light of at least 4 seconds.

12

If you are going to write a letter, do it to your insurance companies.

The insurance companies foot the ball of the increased accidents and they have successfully fought this issue in some cities (don’t remember which ones).

13

You’re probably fine. I’ve gotten flashed many times while in the middle of an intersection. Never got a ticket for it (only red light ticket I got was for a light I knew I blew on a rainy day.) And sometimes the flashes seem to go off at intersections for no discernible reason.

14

Then you were driving too fast for the conditions. What if, instead of a yellow/red light, it was a kid running out or a stalled truck?

15
16

Err, no. He said he felt that he could have safely stopped from where he was when the light turned orange under dry conditions, but not in wet conditions. That doesn’t mean he was driving too fast for the conditions. There will always be some spot in front of the intersection where that statement is true regardless of how fast you’re going unless your vehicle is magically unaffected by wet conditions.

17

Or basic physics.

18

Read his post again. He said he would have only barely stopped in time in the dry. That speed, in the wet, is too fast.

19

I’d like to, but if there was a car behind me I’d get rear-ended. They clearly expect me to go through the yellow light, since they floor it to follow me through (even if its red by then). It’s a vicious cycle.

20

{Aside}So this is where I got it from! I’ve wondered why I call yellow lights “orange” sometimes.{/aside}

The idea behind yellow lights is indeed that you are supposed to stop if you are safely able to do so; half the drivers are too busy texting or talking on the phone to make a good judgement on that, and the other half are so poorly trained that they don’t know or don’t care that you’re supposed to stop if you’re able to (including the idiots who are speeding up to follow someone through the fresh red when you both should have been stopping).

Poorly-trained drivers suck. :frowning: