If they increased the "all-red" time to match, then good for Florida. They've increased their revenues, their roads are safer, and those who are running yellows are getting what they deserve. Running yellows is illegal and far too common.
If they didn't increase the all-red time they are making the roads more dangerous. People get accustomed to the length of the yellow & all-red time. But if the total doesn't change, only the relative proportions it shouldn't have an impact on safety.
Your first link is a red herring. We are trying to increase safety, not reduce red light violations.
Your other two links make a common mistake in traffic safety debates by assuming that an increase in accident rates is a decrease in safety. Look at the types of accidents that are increased or reduced by red light cameras and you'll see that they generally do make intersections safer by reducing high speed, side impact collisions. This comes at the cost of increased low speed collisions, namely people running into someone's bumper as they slam on their brakes to avoid the red light ticket which is a psychological (risk aversion) problem, not a problem with the technology itself.
Also, is shortening yellows actually making the roads safer or is it just a way to increase revenues? Seems like one likely cause of shorter yellow lights is that more people make harder stops at intersections, result in more rear-end collisions.
In many places, such as where I grew up in Ohio, the language regarding yellow lights is to "clear the intersection", and that if you are able to stop, you must not enter an intersection when presented with a yellow light. In other words, treat it like a red light, unless you absolutely cannot stop.
Of course in practice most folks will go for it if they think they can clear the intersection in time. Some may even accelerate, and having excessively long yellow lights may encourage that behavior even more, despite it being illegal.
>Some may even accelerate, and having excessively long yellow lights may encourage that behavior even more, despite it being illegal.
If you are in doubt about whether you can safely stop when the light turns yellow (and you have very little time to make that judgment), it's much safer to err on the side of running it.
The longer the yellow light is, the more likely you are to be able to correctly judge whether you can stop on time. The shorter yellow lights are in your area, the more likely you are to to slam on the brakes to avoid running the red light. Slamming on the brakes is far more dangerous than running a freshly changed red light, to say nothing of running a yellow.
I live somewhere with long yellows and it does encourage people to run the lights. It's a problem, but we are also a very bike-friendly city and long yellows give cyclists time to clear the intersection. Also, there is a delay after the red before the next right-of-way gets their green and this seems to prevent accidents (because the late-yellow/red light runners are clear before the next green).
Nevertheless, we do have some red light cameras here. One day I was stuck at an intersection with a camera, and I was waiting to turn left. I had a red left turn signal, and it suddenly stopped cycling. It was rush hour, and after three cycles with no green arrow, I called the non-emergency dispatch and told them the problem and asked the cop what I should do. She told me to take the safest course of action I thought I could. I told her that was running the red light during a break from oncoming traffic, but that I would be given a ticket for this. She said she couldn't invite me to break the law, but just do the safest thing. The legal move would have been to change lanes to the right and go straight through the intersection on a green, but this was also the most dangerous choice because of the heavy traffic flow. Thankfully the light cycle following my conversation with the cop, I got my green arrow, but it sucked to feel so helpless--knowing the safest and correct action (running the red once oncoming traffic allowed it) and knowing I would be penalized for it.
There is a portion of time where all of the lights at the intersection are red. The person you are responding to notes that as long as this portion of time is increased such that the total time that the intersection has for someone to clear it (i.e. - time that the light is yellow plus time that the lights are all red) stays the same then safety inside the intersection should not be impacted.
This says nothing about safety leading up to the intersection (e.g. - people slamming on their brakes).
I am worried about the case where the driver, distracted, looks away from the intersection for a second. Returning their gaze to the light, they see it red. They never observed it yellow, and thus they have no idea how long it has been red and whether or not it is safe to run the light. Perhaps this is why we have yellow to begin with--as an redundant means of clocking the time until the opposing light turns green.
If the "all-red" time is increased to compensate, then the time before someone else goes does not decrease. However, if they are just decreasing the yellow time, and keeping the all-red the same(making the total time from yellow to opposite direction green shorter) then I agree that safety has been lowered to increase profits, and this would be super un-ethical.
Even if you increase the all-red time, shorter yellows are still more dangerous. For example if you drop the yellow time too low for the legal speed limit of the road then you will create a situation where people have to start emergency braking in order to avoid running the red. This situation is unsafe for obvious reasons.
As someone pointed out it doesn't if the total red+yellow time is still the same (i.e. red time is replaced with yellow).
The counter-argument is well it increases chance of rear end collision when people stop suddenly. And that is true.
The counter-argument to the above is well they should be driving with enough assured distance between vehicles and below the speed limit.
To "maximize" revenue they could be making the legally correct assumption that everyone is keeping a good enough distance and driving below the speed limit, and they'd actually have a legally defensible position as much as I hate to admit it.
(It is also hard to argue informally that they don't know what they are doing, they know perfectly well, as others pointed out, if this was a start up maximizing revenue we should be cheering, right, right...?)
Just so I understand, you are under the impression that 0 seconds is the appropriate time required to stop, which would obviously be the case if your car was moving legally at the speed limit at the edge of the road when the green light immediately changed to a red light.
No, you're missing his point. He's talking about safety, not avoiding fines. If lights go straight from green to red, but then wait 60 seconds before any other traffic goes from red to green, then it won't cause any safety issues, because even if a handful of cars can't stop in time when it goes red, there won't be any other traffic around. Off course it could cause problems with cars going in the same direction stopping too quickly, but the assumption is that cars won't just slam on their breaks as soon as they see the red light (and let's not forget this is also the hypothetical in which there is no orange light).
This line of discussion is unrelated to whether or not they should be trying to maximise fines.
Yellow means "stop if safe". Red means "stop", but when driving "if safe" is always implied. I've driven through red lights to let emergency vehicles through, and a judge would likely throw out a ticket given for such a reason.
Yellow lights increase safety by avoiding the "slam on the brakes" effect you've described. They've replaced this with a very common "floor the accelarator" reaction which also decreases safety. How do you get one without the other? Red light cameras combined with a short yellow seem the best approach to me.
>Yellow lights increase safety by avoiding the "slam on the brakes" effect you've described. They've replaced this with a very common "floor the accelarator" reaction which also decreases safety.
In a typical car, flooring the gas pedal is conservatively going to be about 9ft/s² in the same direction as you're already moving. Slamming on the brakes is going to accelerate you at about 15ft/s² in the opposite direction as you're already moving. The effects these two actions have on safety are not comparable
>Red light cameras combined with a short yellow seem the best approach to me.
Except that that approach has been conclusively demonstrated to increase both accidents and fatalities, while lengthening yellow lights has been shown to reduce both accidents and fatalities.
actually, i wonder if there wouldn't be fewer rear end collisions if there were no yellow lights. people might be more cautious when approaching an intersection and less likely to ride someone's ass.
If they didn't increase the all-red time they are making the roads more dangerous. People get accustomed to the length of the yellow & all-red time. But if the total doesn't change, only the relative proportions it shouldn't have an impact on safety.