Red Light Camera News Red light cameras: Safer? Maybe-ish. Revenue? Yup.
Autos
December 1st, 2011 08:04am
Red light cameras: Safer? Maybe-ish. Revenue? Yup.
by Todd Ruger
So an article in today’s paper http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20111130/ARTICLE/111139978/2416/NEWS?p=1&tc=pg&tc=ar brings word that red light cameras are coming to Sarasota, and of course, once again, police and city officials tell us that the reason is because “the city will be a safer place to drive.” But … is this a fact?
The answer: No. At least, not in the way the Sarasota Police are portraying it. As one Car and Driver analyst put it, the city’s conclusion requires a “breathtaking” level of “statistical acrobatics.”
In short, it remains unproven if cameras at an intersections improve safety at the intersections where they are installed, let alone across the city.
To explain why not, start with one of the most thoroughly researched articles I have ever seen on this controversial topic: This AOL post by Jonathan Ramsey. In a point-counterpoint fashion, Ramsey http://autos.aol.com/article/red-light-camera-accidents/ digs through all the studies done on red light cameras.
The quick summary: Red light cameras are generally believed to reduce T-bone style collisions and left-turn collisions, which produce the worst injuries. But red light cameras are generally believed to increase rear-end collisions, which produces more injuries. And conclusions from studies are all over the map. So, when it comes to whether a red light camera makes a particular intersection safer… Ramsey determines the answer is, “Yes, no, Maybe and It Depends.”
Sarasota Police Capt. Paul Sutton goes a step further when he infers that the cameras will make the city safer because drivers will “get into the habit of stopping at a red light.” That conclusion relies on something called the “spillover effect.” That effect, used in studies of red light cameras by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, is an even murkier area, as Car and Driver explained way back in 2002: http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/rear-end-crashes-go-up-after-red-light-cameras-go-in
Spillover effect is IIHS’s trick for giving the cameras credit for reducing fatalities even where they aren’t. It assumes that red-light cameras at a few intersections will cause drivers to stop promptly all over town, or all over the county, or maybe all over the state, so improvements outside the cameras’ ZIP Codes are credited to them nonetheless. As statistical acrobatics go, this one is breathtaking.
The Federal Highway Administration would only say that there are “weak indications” of a spillover effect, and all that does is point to a need for the issue to be studied, Ramsey’s article points out.
There is not a study (disclaimer: That I know of, send me one if I’m wrong) that shows that red light cameras at one intersection make drivers “get into the habit of stopping at a red light,” as Sutton put it, and therefore make other, non-camera intersections safer.
Still, municipalities trot out this reasoning every time they install red light cameras.
On top of that, critics of red light cameras say all of this safety talk becomes a real headscratcher when you consider a study from the Institute of Transportation Engineers on the yellow light:
Studies by the ITE have shown that if you slightly increase and standardize the run-time of the yellow light, and leave a slight delay in the cross traffic’s transition to green, accidents will be reduced.
So, with no studies clearly showing that Sarasota will be safer with red light cameras, and no sign the city will change yellow light timing, the city is left with their other reason for installing them. The $158 fine per infraction will generate $650,000 of revenue for the city in the first year.
Nobody contests that will happen.
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