Time for yet another "Mass Shooting" thread

They had to make up the money spent buying guns back.

 

Red light cameras are awful on safety grounds. Speed limits in the US are stupid and almost always far below where they actually have a safety in impact. In any case, the real problem on highways is speed differential, not raw speed.

 

Sure. It's not that much of a trap.

 

do you know how many accidents are perhaps prevented because people don't run red lights for fear of a ticket?

 

I would guess very, very few.

People run red lights at three a.m. on empty streets mostly, I would guess, and most tickets are issued from cameras or overlooks on such events. There was a light in central Connecticut that was famous in the late '70s for just that-- the guy was writing two or three people a night...

I could be wrong, but...

 

I see a lot of people running red lights on left turns (long after the turn signal turned red). annoys the hell out of me.

 

@American Brummie, minerva wants to learn about probabilistic scenarios for things that don't happen.

While I live in drivers' hell, and I see a lot of people running red lights on a daily basis, it is also my experience that bad drivers are not discouraged by fines. Off course on this I only have anecdotal evidence and I would not know where to look for scientific studies, but when my acquaintances get tickets, most of them opt to pay a lawyer and fight it, or maybe take the online course to remove points from their licenses. Next day they will drive the exact same way they did before getting the ticket.

PS. Found some papers on the issue (that seem to support the pro-fine thesis), but they are not broken down by type of ticket:

http://web.missouri.edu/~leedn/Tickets_DLee.pdf

https://ideas.repec.org/p/umc/wpaper/1119.html

http://journalistsresource.org/stud...motor-vehicle-crashes-click-it-or-ticket-laws

 

I don't think a lot of red lights are run because the driver is a "bad driver" - i.e. doesn't know how to drive properly.
I think most red lights are run by people who are in a hurry to get to a destination and believe that their time is more valuable than the time of the people waiting for them to clear the intersection. in my opinion, it's pure selfishness. it's like people who pull into an intersection fully knowing that they won't be able to clear the intersection before the light for the crossing traffic turns green. of course they end up snarling traffic and creates delays for other people, but do they care about that? of course not.

 

The evidence shows that punitive methods are less effective than other approaches such as humanised signage and other forms of "nudging". I saw an article on this a while back but can't find it now, but a google search dredged this up and its pretty similar:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140417-road-designs-that-trick-our-minds

 

maybe we can make red lights into a sad face emoticon. or maybe an angry faced one or maybe a tongue out one

 

On a serious note, if I'm in a rush and speeding slightly and see a camera, I slow down for the camera and speed back up again if the road is clear. If I see a sign that says "School" or "Welcome to X - please drive slowly" I slow down for a longer period until the school or village is long behind me.

 

A charitable take on the subject, but I think basic resentment on the part of police is more likely; they don't want people interfering with their revenue generation.

 

That along with inattentive drivers and my guess is you're covering the sources of most accidents. If the police really wanted to improve public safety they'd be driving around looking for people on their cell phones (easy to identify as they continually speed up, slow way down, drift over the line...) instead of hiding behind a bush pointing their radar gun.

 

Some of the biggest speed merchants around here are cops.

 

yeah, but I don't know how that would work for your run-of-the-mill red light.
just this morning this is what I saw. the light had just turned red. the car in the center lane came to a stop. the semi truck behind him whipped into the right lane (how he was able to check his blind spot on such short notice I have no idea) and ran the red light. I mean it had already been red for at least 5 seconds before he even hit the light, let alone his trailer clearing the intersection.

 

Study Finds Running Red Lights is a Major Source of Fatal Accidents
According to the Federal Highway Association (FHWA), about 2.3 million intersection crashes occur in the United States each year, resulting in over 7,700 deaths. About 10 percent of these deaths, or 768 of them in 2008, occur when a driver intentionally or negligently runs a red light. Deaths nationwide in red-light-running accidents have decreased since 2008, but for most of the past decade have held steady at rates between 900 and 1,000 deaths per year. http://www.hardwickpendergast.com/s...lights-major-source-fatal-accidents/#more-223

 

my experience is that people on the phone tend to slow way down.

 

As the man said. Cameras , speed traps have nothing to do with safety. They just generate an amazing amount of revenue.

In a Rockford Files episode the was this school bus parked with red lights flashing ...........................

 

The number one predictor of automobile deaths is easy access to cars

That said, the solution is trains. As Jitty said, humans are bad drivers.

And yet we all think we are good drivers.

Makes one wonder...