DC's New Traffic Cams
As a way to increase revenue for the DC local government, they have decided to install a new system of traffic cams that not only can grab you for speed or red lights, they can get you for rolling a s...
Forum Discussion
JJBIRISH wrote:
It matters not what word you use to describe it… they are needed more than ever… just today every intersection with a light I came to had no less than 3 running the light while making left turns across traffic alone…
How do I know??? The ones going in the same direction I saw as many as ten drive on through after the light changed to red (not short yellows), and the ones coming from the other direction had fewer because I could only count the ones coming through after I already had the green light… there is a period of time where the lights are red before opposing traffic gets a green light…
Also at one light two ahead of me clearly ran the red light, I stopped and one in the lane to my left but behind me and two in the lane to my right went through the light after I stopped, one straight through and one turned right…
So go ahead and install these revenue generating cameras, they are needed and after they produce plenty of revenue they will also reduce the number of violators…
I would rather take my chances with the camera than the idiot drivers that just plain ignore the laws…
What you just described is a poorly designed intersection. Traffic cameras are a band-aid at best, not a fix. The city/county/state - depending upon which owns the road - needs to conduct a traffic study and have a traffic engineer redesign the intersection. A well designed road can significantly influence a driver's behavior. So who's going to spend $$$ on a traffic study and several million on the road work? Other than left turn cameras to record who is at fault during a left turn accident, most all other cameras are merely easy to install revenue generators. They fix nothing.
Long before there were traffic cameras, a low-tech solution at intersections with a history of drivers running red lights was to configure the lights as "Delayed Green". It used to be about enforcing good behavior in drivers and keeping them safe from each other. Nowadays it seems that it is all about profiting from bad behavior.
