Challenge every Red Light Camera Ticket!

They've been here for a long time.

Try driving around Washington, DC.

 

Interesting articles, Nate.

I especially like these statements:

From the second article: "...the Lockheed Martin contract prevents the
city of Tempe from extending the yellow light interval where Lockheed's
cameras are in place."

From the third article: "In Virginia, a study conducted in 2001 in
Fairfax County found that simply increasing the yellow time at a given
intersection by 1.5 seconds reduced red-light infractions by 96 percent,
which was significantly better than the drop in infractions resulting
from the red light cameras they had installed."

I guess my take on the whole thing, since people's lives are at stake
from red-light runners, is that camera ticketing can be used, but *NOT*
until the legal system is set up to pay a *hefty* bounty to citizens who
accurately report a short-cycled yellow, and the municipalities are
forced to: (1) pay the bounty without delay and without challenge when
the report is certified to be correct (false reporting would be met with
a stiff fine to counter people who just want to put a roadblock in the
way of the legal system), and (2) Shut down the camera until the
intersection's timing system is subsequently *certified* to be within
the legal parameters (which would be somethng like 4 seconds for a
typical intersection).

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

Daniel, we've got the bloddy things everywhere here!

My take is there's a trade-off between fewer, high-speed injury causing
prangs and more low-speed minor bingles. There is a shift from people damage
to vehicle damage. If I HAD to choose one, I'd pick vehicle damage every
time.

Good luck with driver education though, perhaps NA drivers are more
educatable than the Aussies. But there seems to be so much disagreement as
to what is legal and correct when it comes to indicator use and vehicle
placement on the roundabout. I'm not saying which is which - I'll probably
be wrong too. I slow down and avoid everyone!

Steve
Newcastle NSW Australia

 

Oh but they do, Andrew, they do, I've seen it several times! (Not me going
the wrong way, I hasten to add)

Steve
Newcastle NSW Aust

 

Send them to Britain for a crash course in handling roundabouts...

(Pun intended.)

DAS

 

Yes, and Australia is FAR higher on the ranked list of safest countries
(by death, injury and property damage per vehicle-kilometre travelled and
per vehicle registered) than the US is.

Of course.

 

In Canada we have a few small roundabouts, usually installed at
intersections where drivers were failing to stop as required. While
driving in the UK and NZ I'd experienced them. I think they're great
with two major problems:

- Bad drivers test your driving reflexes. This includes those who
haven't taken the time to learn how to use the roundabouts; who can't
merge with traffic; or who are inattentive. I found this was not common
in the UK, but surely was in NZ. As for Canada, the situation is a new
one but I it seems to be somewhere in between.

- Pedestrians can't cross occupied intersections without causing all the
traffic to stop. Even placing a crosswalk several meters from the
intersection causes traffic to backup into the circle.

On the up side, they use far less real estate and maybe they'll weed out
some bad drivers (Nah! too optimistic).

Cheers, Eh!

 

...And in Oz there's so much to hit

But seriously, you have to look at more than just one statistic or you
can easily be mislead.

I have used and appreciate the benefits traffic circles in the Canada,
the UK and NZ, but they do require a higher level of attention and skill
than traffic signals, merge lanes (ramps) and stop signs.

As with so many situations, DUHrivers are the biggest problem.

Another problem is the impediment they pose to pedestrians.

 

Hi...

I really, really hope that you're in Edmonton, and that
the dratted things aren't proliferating across the country!

Used a few there about 35 years or so ago (visitor).
Hated 'em! Edmontonians called them suicide circles.

Take care.

Ken

 

We have one here, I've driven through it twice. It has some nice wide lanes
and some guy in a Lexus decided to try and pass me while inside it and the
other time a lady in a BMW pulled out from one of the side streets right in
front of me making me come to a complete stop to keep from hitting her.
The only way they would work around here is if there were stop lights to
enter them.

 

I'm amazed that a one way road with the only other roads joining it
are on one side only can cause such consternation in people.

Are there more complicated round-abouts out there (aside from the
one's in England & Europe)? I've driven those & they seem pretty
straight forward. (exclusively straight forward as a matter of fact).

I know that if I ran a body shop, a physio clinic or a power company I
might hate round-abouts but what else is it that motivating this
revulsion?

I've obviously overlooked something massive because to me they seem
to save brake wear, wait times, red light runners, & are equally
effective with or without electricity. Those in the north east US
who can remember back one summer will know what I am talking about.

All very interesting..........

 

Eugene wrote:

[Roundabouts]

That would entirely defeat the purpose of having one. I don't think
that a minority who lack the ability to use roundabouts properly should
be used as an argument against such a traffic control device..

 

An even better idea would be to put a camera in everybody's living room and pipe
the video to law enforcement. That should reduce home break-ins and provide
plenty of evidence if somebody takes something inside the home.

 

Hardly a new idea. Thought of no later than 1948.

You haven't read George Orwell's 1984 (pub 1948), I take it?

DAS

 

Now the Outer Drive exit isn't that terrible... you don't get much cross
traffic at it. Although I think both off-ramps from I-75 at Outer Dr. are
somewhat stupid. The Northbound exit which goes to Lafayette in the
neighborhood, then you have to turn left to get to Outer Dr just seems
ridiculous. They have roundabouts up at MSU, and they seem to work pretty
good there (and those are college students driving through those). The new
semi-roundabout in Downtown Detroit, thanks to the Compuware building I have
only been through at night. Although they still use lights all along it,
and I am not completely sure if it truly circles. I will have to check for
sure. I think they are adding them up in Oakland county too. Regardless of
the method used, I just ask for people to learn to pay attention while they
are driving, and the state maintain the roads.

 

Dan, Dan, Dan...you get so worked up!

Let's spend our dollars on making bad road implementations good ones.
Let's get correct lighting, signage, lane markings, 80th-percentile
speed limits and proper traffic signal timing in place before we embark
on 'progress' and 'innovation'. Let's get roads expanded to the capacity
that traffic patterns demand. Let's get battery backup on every traffic
signal in every major intersection so power failures don't turn things
into a quagmire. Let's spend some time enforcing traffic laws so we
return to courteous driving -- signalling lane changes comes to mind
immediately as being something totally ignored. Let's go after every
idiot driving down the road in something that should be in a junk yard
or body shop and force them to either scrap the car or bring it up to
standards with regard to lighting, visibility, braking, etc.

If what we already had was properly engineered and maintained and the
results weren't satisfactory, then I would be all for ideas like
traffic circles, and it wouldn't matter a lick to me who thought of it
first. Your subtle suggestion that I'm being xenophobic is duly noted,
but unwarranted.

Your argument seems to be that we should drop these things in place
because it's a smarter idea that can be imported from somewhere else.
Surely you don't mean to sound that way, do you?

And surely the fact that the U.S. is sixteenth on some traffic safety
list isn't solely attributable to the fact that we haven't adopted every
European traffic law and roadway design, is it? Surely it has a lot to
do with our demographics, the poor state of our existing roadways, and a
general disdain for strict adherence to traffic law in this country,
doesn't it? And how many vehicles are there on the roads of the "safer"
countries as compared to the US?

I might remind you that if everybody obeyed the law at a standard
90-degree intersection *there wouldn't be any crashes*. Before you
accuse me of not being realistic, let's posit that shit happens, and
people crash at intersections, be they of standard or round-about
design. How many more crashes are we going to see at roundabouts
because our aging population will be confused by them and misuse them,
when they might have done alright at a standard intersection?

--Geoff

 

Did you read the articles you posted? Most site the same San Diego cameras.
2.8 seconds versus 3 seconds. You think the lawyers' stop watch is that
accurate? Also they give only one side of the story. I love the way
lawyers are crooks when sueing McDonald's for too hot coffee but here they
provide your facts even though they are advocates for one side.

 

How about this one?
http://home.san.rr.com/roundabout/rndabout.jpg

I love roundabouts -- way, way better than that abomination known as the
4-way stop. I wish we had more of them out here in California. San
Francisco was doing an experiment with them, but I'm not sure how it's
turning out.

 

Wow! Where is this oddity?

MB

 

Good Lord, this looks like a roundabout designed by committee.

What a waste of space, what an abomination.

The clean lines and smooth progression envisioned by engineer's once
again routed by the city planners. What's worse it looks like it's in
the UK.

Thing is, there's only 5 intersecting streets here. Can you imagine
what this town council would do with 8 or more streets meeting, as
happens in some areas?

This is to real roundabouts, as two way street traffic light induced
gridlock is to synchronized 1 way street systems. Namely, how not to
do it.

Great to see the pic.

With some refinement, a reduction by 2/3's in size and the addition of
vegitation the neighbourhood in the picture could be quieter, safer
and with less congestion.