Quote:
Quote by: HelioPrime  Sad a few city departments decide to try and take advantage of a perfectly good system.
Traffic cams are great, they could potentially save every city money by catching drivers with a photo rather than a cop who has to spend time and gas money watching people. |
Except that the evidence shows they
aren't great. There have been some fantastic articles by Car and Driver lately in which they have cited scientific studies proving that accidents at red-light-camera intersections
increase after the cameras are installed.
Conversely, they have found that the best way to make intersections safer is to increase the yellow time to on the order of 5-6 seconds. This is logical: There will always be a very small number of people who run lights for idiotic reasons, and no camera or anything else will stop them. The vast majority of drivers would never intentionally run a red light, and so increasing the warning they have that a red is coming allows them to abide by the law as they are trying to do.
All the articles are available online, just go to their site and search "red-light cameras".