With the increasing prevelence of red light cameras at busy intersections in our time, there is a new disturbing trend with the length of yellow lights.
Municipalities wishing to install these traffic cameras make contracts with the manufacturers of said equipment. An article in Car and Driver magazine (Steering Column by Csaba Csere, September '01 http://www.caranddriver.com/article.asp?section_id=27&article_id=3805&page_number=1) points to an instance where Lockheed Martin included in the contract a clause to prohibit lengthening the yellow light.
If not necessarily proving in the article that yellow lights are being shortened, you can imagine the cities impetus to do so, as more tickets equals more profits.
Suffice it to say that, should the length of the yellow prove too short, the result will be the inevitable loss of money by the municipality in lawsuits. There are other economic forces at play than just making ticket money.
You mean to say that people will file suit against a city for making yellow lights too short? I have to disagree with you on that, on grounds that they have no grounds.
By no means am I a lawyer, but I have done a bit of research on the subject. A governing body named the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) makes recommendations for posted speed limits and yellow light durations. These, however, are not mandatory and are thrown aside in the face of making a buck from a motorist caught in the “zone of dilemma”. California, for instance, is not in compliance with these recommendations, especially in areas of high numbers of red light cameras, i.e. San Diego. Speed limits are supposed to be based on the speed of the “V 85” (read 85th percentile of velocity) unless there is a clear hazard giving reason otherwise.
My point being, there are no grounds for filing an indictment, as there is no law defining proper standards for road markings and timings.
(At least read down to where the city of Mesa raised the duration by a second and reduced red light citations by 56% on the month previous, and 73% on the month before that. May be off topic for the argument, but it’s food for thought :))
Driving is not a right that the government is compelled to respect. As they say in Driver’s training, it is a privilege. As such, they have the power to make the rules, and we are obliged to follow them.
The government could ban driving all together and require us to use public transportation. Even though the administration would be hastily murdered by the automotive industry, you honestly think we would have grounds to file suit for losing a privilege that the government demed inappropriate, for whatever reason?
In prohibition, remind me how successful lawsuits against the government were.
Impossible is a tough word to define. In the course of driving, one must be under control of his/her car at all times. To say that a yellow light was too brief and caused you to run a red light is likely to admit fault in not being in control of your auto. I say likely, only because there is a limit to everything, and at some point a yellow light really does become impossible to obey.
Regardless of the legality of the situation, this thread was to update the state of yellow lights. In the article I linked above you can find this:
“Red light camera enthusiasts and peddlers rely heavily on people incorrectly assuming that drivers nowadays have lost their collective minds and have decided to “run red lights” with reckless abandon. Contrary to that assumption, we know that what is different is that the lights are turning red as much as 30–40% faster than before, at least where the contemporary “red light camera” methods of establishing yellow time are being used or have been implemented.”
I was merely pointing out that yellow lights are getting shorter again, 25 years after the original column. The debating over legality was just an enjoyable side-trip.
Classically, in tort lawsuits, such as those filed over automobile accidents, one looks for other parties besides just the driver to sue. This is because you can get more money out of a lot of defendants than you usually can out of one defendant.
The most common defendant joined is the state or county or municipality which had jurisdiction over such issues as speed limit, striping, lights, etc. at the site of the crash.
In determining liability, one can easily assert that a yellow light not sufficiently long enough could lead to an accident at an intersection in a number of scenarios. Further, the knowledge that the lights are shorter can be argued to cause people to speed up when seeing one, in order to beat it.
Failure to follow a known set of safety parameters would be a very difficult piece of evidence to overcome in such a suit.
Municipalities in California are to some extent shielded from such issues thanks to the proposition passed there several years ago limiting the liability of a defendant in tort to their proportional share of general damages based on the assessment of their “fault.” They are still jointly and severably liable with other defendants for specific damages (such as medical care costs).
So, yes, trust me that no municipality with a city attorney of any competence is reducing the timing of yellow lights without consideration of some serious liability issues.
Oh, I don’t put much stock in rant sites like linked by tunafish It is well known anyone can support most any position with such “evidence.” :rolleyes:
How about a link to the National Motorists Association? Here’s what their president James J Baxter has to say about it:
“The apparent increase in red light violations is largely the result of a 20-year pattern of deliberately changing the standards for the timing of yellow lights.”
Why should I be any more impressed with such an organization? They are nothing more than a group of people who are pissed off over certain “issues” they perceive to be true, and band together to fulminate about it.
In short, they are a ranting group, willing to tell whatever half-truths they can cook up in order to support their biased views. :rolleyes:
Excellent point. The people want to accomplish something. I thank you for your links that prove municipalities are not pandering to red light cameras.
My point stands that in places with Red Light Cameras, yellow light duration is dangerously short. Refer to cases in San Diego for non-biased proof of that. The court actually found that. Are we supposed to believe that out of all the places with these cameras and the signed contracts with the manufacturers, San Diego was the only offender? Of course not.
If you want to argue legality, you surely win, and I agree. It’s wrong. But it is happening. Now prove otherwise.
I thank you in advance, for I’m sure your powers of deciphering “half-truths” will lead you to it, for debunking my assertions and the assertions of my links.
My particular county was presented with data a number of years ago saying lengthening the yellow light duration was as effective as red light cameras for reducing red light running. So, amazingly enough, they did just that.
We have yellow lights here that are quite long, and this seems to work well to cut down on the problem.
