You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy?
Shortening the time of a yellow light at an intersection.
That’s like shortening the time you have to tuck yourself in and zip up your zipper.
It’s crazy, it’s dangerous, and as far as the yellow lights go, it’s happening around this country.
Some say it’s all in the name of raising revenue.
Red-light cameras are popping up at intersections all across America. The idea is simple; the light turns red and if a car is in the middle of the intersection, a picture of the violators license tag is automatically recorded. The owner of that car is then sent a ticket. The premise is, a camera can watch an intersection 24/7 where as a cop can write but a few tickets a day at any given intersection. City leaders will tell you that the cameras are designed to slow traffic down, and increase revenue because of round the clock, non stop enforcement.
But there’s a darker side to running the yellow light. A side where revenue is the driving force, turning civic leaders into municipal whores bowing down to the all might dollar.
We’ve all run the yellow light, punched the accelerator to jam under an “auburn” light. We don’t want a ticket and we certainly don’t want to be delayed at an intersection.
But what if that yellow light that lasted 3 seconds, is now 1.5 seconds long? You are accelerating to get through the intersection and you have 1/2 the time to make it. I didn’t take calculus, but I venture say mass times acceleration is enough to give Albert Einstein a boner. Put another way, more of you will be caught on camera running the red light. More infractions means lots more money for the municipality where the camera is operating.
The dangerous part to all this? If the yellow is half as long and more cars are in the intersection of a light that is turning red, the potential for collisions goes up dramatically. And the collisions are at higher speeds because you are driving faster to get through the same yellow lights.
As Einstein said when picking up his Nobel Prize for theoretical time travel; Speed kills EH?
“With all of the stories we hear on a daily basis, there is little doubt that the desire for ticket revenue trumps safety concerns,” Gary Biller, executive director of the National Motorists Association told AlterNet. “
Some statistics show that red-light cameras can cause more accidents, not less.
They say guns don’t kill people, people kill people. The same arguement could apply here. Yellow lights don’t cause crashes, people cause crashes because they drive unsafely. So if the light is going to be yellow for shorter durations of time, make that known. Post a sign saying light is 1.5 seconds long. You will get a ticket. You might even die if you accelerate to avoid this light. Give the motorists a fighting chance not put themselves in harm’s way just so your city can add another ticket to its piggy bank.
and that is crazy!