Shapeshifter, its not hard to understand! Its because I want to...

Ooops, now I have one at the back! Maybe I should start a new trend with this one?

Tom, your comment was buried deep in post 10. Surely you don't want me to pick apart or delve into every word you have posted? Truth be said, you posted a few more times after #10. I didn't wish to single you or your comment out as a personal attack, just as a prelude to a general feeling of lawlessness apparent on todays mass transit system (road rage and idiots in general who point a 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 ton object at various speeds without regard for others). Ranting about traffic laws and the tools used to enforce them usually means someone is pissed about tickets in general and they wish they would leave people alone to do as they wish regardless of the rules. Fact is, traffic control systems are a hugely complicated system designed to move ALL traffic freely. Sometimes the civil servants get pressure from politicians, sometimes pressure from the community, sometimes they are affected by their own experiences that may or may not have have happened to themselves (close friends or loved ones). Sometimes, they just get it wrong. The point here is they are pressured to do what they do the best they can. Instead of ranting on a board, people should go to their city/county council meetings and start the process of a review of the particular traffic problems your having to live with. There is a system of review, if points are well taken, documented correctly, and the existing system is flawed, they will correct it. Now in their defence, maybe your not aware of a particular point to have them set up as they are? If you start that process of review, they will let anyone who persues it know why they are set the way they are. One final note, traffic systems today are many times interlinked throughout multiple intersections/roadways. One change in any portion of any interweaved system will cause a ripple effect throughout that particular system of control. Its not easy to modify one thing in those multi-system sequences. In your research into why a particular system is doing what it is doing, you may find out just exactly why a particular light is there, and why it is as important it is controlling what it it is controlling.

Finally, revenue generation has and will be a governing factor everywhere. Personally, I think parking tickets should be counted in driving records and insurance rates. Generating revenue allows communities to afford more cops and equipment. More cops and equipment means catching more of the scum of the communities, and it keeps the local economy vibrant (donut shops)! For all you cops out there, that was a JOKE! Peace out!

 

Oh, for all the anti-gov types, yes big brother is watching. Red light camera's are one way they keep tabs on traffic flow and peoples driving habits. It is also a way they reconstruct exactly what happened at a particular intersection when someones wife, child(ren) or husband/son lost their lives. If you think big brother is watching, you should be more worried why big business is watching. They are free to monitor ten to twenty times more about you and your habits/whereabouts. It begs to mention also that business has files on you and your habits/preferences that you cannot imagine. I don't see the masses running to the aclu to protect them from big business installing all those security cameras all over their stores and parking lots. Where is the uproar? Red light cameras is the government catching up to the private sector, and making some much needed revenue in the process. How many business's do you think use cameras to have cars towed away that park in their lots and shop elsewhere? So next time you hear about someone getting a ticket from one of those intersection, smile, because it helps fund local law enforcement!

 

I agree with graphite ghost,
If you want to drive, drive but follow the rules
If you want to eat go to a restaurant
If you want to read go to the library
If you want to race, go to the track
If you want to wath a movie go to the theater
so on and so forth,
No matter how good of a driver you think you are do these things and more together and you eventually will have\cause a problem, I see it all the time You can not pay attention to everything at once. Alot of people think that the road is theirs and everyone else should get out of their way, then complain when the police or whatever catches them. If you feel that your way is best and you can handle it please don't take anyone else with you, in traffic is no place to find out if you are as good as you think. By the way, I'm not perfect either never said I was.

 

Larry and Ghost, I think we can all agree that safe driving is good for everyone. I don't advocate lawlessness any more than I advocate stupidity. And driving while you're trying to do a bunch of other things, or with a lot of distractions is just plain stupid.

I'm not anti-law enforcement or anti-government. I don't think that the roads should be avenues of lawless chaos like the movie Road Warrior.

My anger at government / law enforcement / city planners / dept's of transportation is how they fail to identify the real problems. They are treating the symptoms and not the disease. They seem to be more interested in profit than in public safety. Traffic tickets should not be a source of revenue that is relied upon. Ticket income should not be a significant impact to the bottom line.

If law enforcement were properly funded from the highest levels on down, I'm sure they wouldn't have to resort to this kind of chicanery. Law enforcement should be funded because it is a basic societal requirement. It shouldn't be funded by the amount of criminals they catch. The purpose of a fine for a summary offense (like running a light or speeding) is to punish the perpetrator (thereby discouraging crime), not to fund the government.

When the DOT or City Planner change a roadway, 9 times out of 10 they slow traffic down. They add traffic lights where they are unnecessary. They reduce speed limits. They add signage and warnings and all sorts of other measures intended to make the road safer. Why do they do this? Because statistics tell them that slower is safer. I say there is a basic flaw in that reasoning. In a microcosm, yes, slower is safer. If two vehicles collide, obviously, the slower they were going the less damage will be done. But when you step back and look at the whole picture, you realize that the longer you keep people on the road, the more likely they are to have an accident. I'm not talking about fatigue here. I'm talking pure statistical nature of driving. Let's say that there is a 1 in 1000 chance of a person being in an accident every hour. Well, if you keep them on the road for 2 hours instead of one, you just doubled your chances of an accident. (Of course, I made those numbers up so they'd be easy to follow, they are not scientific.)

What happens when you slow traffic down? You keep people on the road longer - which causes more accidents. You also give people the feeling that they are wasting their time and could be doing something more productive. That's when they start talking on phones, texting, sending emails, reading papers, etc. etc. etc. That behavior causes a lot more accidents. Even for those that don't multi-task while driving, the longer you keep them on the road and the slower you make them go, the more likely they are to get bored and not pay attention. How many accidents could have been prevented if everyone involved had been paying attention to their driving?

Also, beyond the big picture / little picture debate, I have serious issues with the transformation of law enforcement from people to machines. The red light camera is good example of this. When the law was written there were no red light cameras. There was no intention of having law enforcement monitor every single vehicle through an intersection every time all of the time. One of the great functions that cops perform is a human interface between the letter of the law and the citizen. When a live officer pulls someone over, a human decides whether to give a ticket or not. A lot of that depends on if the office deems that the drivers behavior needs to be punished. The officer saw the whole incident and can make a judgment. With a camera, all the human sees is a few pictures, narrow in scope, and not enough information. For example: a driver sitting at a red light at 4am. There are no other vehicles in sight. Why should he waste his time sitting there waiting for the light to change? He stopped. He looked. The way couldn't get any clearer. If he goes, that camera will give him a ticket when no reasonable law enforcement officer would.

Personally, I advocate a move towards what Denmark is testing out. They taken several key intersections that used to have high accident rates and very long red light cycles, which backed up traffic unbearably during rush hours. They removed the lights. They removed ALL the signage. There's no stop sign, no red light, no yield sign, nothing! Just a busy intersection. If you follow the US DOT's methodology, you would think that this intersection would be a total disaster - grid lock and accidents out the wazoo! But guess what? The accident rate dropped dramatically. The rate of traffic flow through the intersection increased. Traffic backup decreased. And: people were happier!

How do you think that happened? Well, it's quite simple. Without all of the traffic control devices, people had to PAY ATTENTION and drive. It forced them to do what they were supposed to be doing anyway.

Would it work here? I don't know. What I do know is that our system is not working. We need to explore other options. I don't think the Big Brother approach will help us. It will only hinder us more.

 

that Denmark thing sounds kind of crazy, unless they are using roundabouts (which I think should be substituted for red lights at every major intersection)

 

Tom, I don't usually get involved in other people's debates but I am very passionate about the 'usefulness' of traffic cameras, and completely agree with you.

I would like to refer Ghost and larry back to my earlier post, number 17:

'The most profitable £50k camera in the country is down near me at the end of the M11 motorway. It makes over a million pounds a year profit so it's obviously doing a good job then? Except casualties at that particular blackspot have doubled since they installed the camera!

Bet they don't take it away though!'

Regards, Andy.

 

When the DOT or City Planner change a roadway, 9 times out of 10 they slow traffic down. They add traffic lights where they are unnecessary. They reduce speed limits. They add signage and warnings and all sorts of other measures intended to make the road safer. Why do they do this? Because statistics tell them that slower is safer. I say there is a basic flaw in that reasoning. In a microcosm, yes, slower is safer. If two vehicles collide, obviously, the slower they were going the less damage will be done. But when you step back and look at the whole picture, you realize that the longer you keep people on the road, the more likely they are to have an accident. I'm not talking about fatigue here. I'm talking pure statistical nature of driving. Let's say that there is a 1 in 1000 chance of a person being in an accident every hour. Well, if you keep them on the road for 2 hours instead of one, you just doubled your chances of an accident. (Of course, I made those numbers up so they'd be easy to follow, they are not scientific.)

What happens when you slow traffic down? You keep people on the road longer - which causes more accidents. You also give people the feeling that they are wasting their time and could be doing something more productive. That's when they start talking on phones, texting, sending emails, reading papers, etc. etc. etc. That behavior causes a lot more accidents. Even for those that don't multi-task while driving, the longer you keep them on the road and the slower you make them go, the more likely they are to get bored and not pay attention. How many accidents could have been prevented if everyone involved had been paying attention to their driving?


All of this part I'm not buying. At what point is it fast enough? Some people will always want to go faster. The always has to be a line somewhere. The problem isn't the speed in My opinion it's the difference in speed between cars and the attention given to the main task of driving. Also I'm not buying into that bored part. People for the most part will do whatever they can get away with right or wrong. If I can bend a rule a little maybe then just because I don't agree with it or it's just not for me I can bend it a little further. We had two crashes this week on the same road within an hour, one was texting and the other was reaching for something in the back seat, both in heavy traffic. Right turn on red has become right turn without slowing down and looking as you're going through the intersection.

That said I do agree with you on the red light camera stuff - a money maker for the most part, but If you aren't running the light you won't get a ticket.

 

I wonder if we have reached a point of no return. Can modern drivers be retrained? Can they be taught to pay attention when driving? If not, then this will just keep getting worse until someone invents a car that drives itself, turning the driver into a passenger.

 

I don't think the former will get better until the latter happens. Then we might as well take the bus.

 

'one was texting and the other was reaching for something in the back seat, both in heavy traffic'

Larry, I absolutely agree that both of those events should never have happened, but cameras don't catch the real idiots, do they??

Regards, Andy.

 

Change of Subject: Seeing red over yellow lights. Experts say three seconds is not long enough

 

After seeing billvp's link, I am really .

Looking up wikipedia about traffic lights, I find that the standards I used to know that were current in the mid 90's are totally bonkered??? Some programmers/jurisdictions allow one second for every ten mph (for yellows). This is crazy! How screwed up is this? So in these jurisdictions, you have to remember the speed limits on the roads you travel, to know if you can 'beat' the red? Crazy man! Not to mention, any judge or cop will tell you to not memorize speed limits because they can change at any time. I digress... Its no wonder people are running red lights. Look how many different jurisdictions are 'doing their own thing' with traffic control. And, what happens when you move, or travel to another state or go out of town on vacation to another jurisdiction, and you 'expect' a yellow in a 45mph zone to last 4.5 seconds..... Totally crazy... I have some digging to do in my old archives for the references I had to use when programming traffic controllers.....

It seems standardization has long gone by the wayside... Best advice I can give now, is when you see a yellow, slow to a stop. If you get corned by someone in the rear, he/she was 'following too closely' and its their ticket. I sure as hell will not run through a yellow unless I saw it turn yellow and can make it through the intersection WITHIN two seconds.

I surely do not look forward to having my XF get 'creamed'...

 

I have 30 yrs in law enforcement, 11 yrs as a city councilman, 12 yrs as a city planner...and a great friend, a civil engineer. We had to take this problem on when growth went crazy around here....he brought up roundabouts, and I laughed. I told him I would be working accident after accident....well, the community to the south of us, heeded the engineers advice, and roundabouts started replacing intersection after intersection, and I was wrong...traffic moves, not really that many accidents after everyone got used to them...so they are the norm around the north side of Indy now.

As for the red light cameras....I don't really care for them, but larger cities, who break down their enforcement to divisions, well, they have officers who just work traffic..., officers who just work investigations of certain crime...I can see why they go to this method...they can't be everywhere...but, for some reason, to me, they just don't seem right...regardless of the technology...

 

Wow, the new 'Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices' [for streets and highways] 2009 Edition, has really opened my eyes! What a difference more than 15 years makes! Anyone interested in changing/challenging their local traffic control setups should peruse this manual (the bible, so to speak) and any or all local supplements to above said document. It is the basis for setting up your systems, and I do not doubt there are many provisions allowing variances all across the US. I have @ 16+ years and 27+ meg of reading to catch up on.

No time like the present!

 

Do you have a link to said document Ghost?

 

who is leaning on your car, Tom? who is that lovely...lol Forget red light cameras, and take me to your red light neighborhood....

 

As long as people use courtesy and and a pinch of good sense, roundabouts are great. They keep things moving and at the very least. They minimize damage and injuries when an accident does occur. Here in Kansas we even have them on highways. A few of them are pretty tight for a big truck like ours. But I like the challenge of getting around it without touching the inner truck easement. I'll bet the death rate at these highway intersections will drop to near zero. The Brits got it right here.

 

Let me guess ... Carmel, IN

 

Tom, I haven't figured out how to post links here yet (sometimes computer dumb). Do a yahell search on [ Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices ] (or MUTCD), and make sure the one you review is the 2009 edition. Sure was an eye opener for me! Ever heard the phrase ' eating crow '? Like I said, sure changed a lot in 16+ years when I worked on them..... A note of caution, its a LOT of READING with many applications, so make sure your in the right section for the situation your reviewing.

Cannot figure out why they are not standardized... The two second rule works at any speed, same as following too closely. If you follow someone at a minimum two second interval, you'll stop safely (given your not distracted, of course)...

 

I took drivers ed in high school just a few years ago. They are actually teaching 3 seconds instead of 2 now. I guess they added on an extra second so you could look up from the cell phone and still be 2 seconds away.

Not that anyone pays any attention to that rule.