Vision Zero and road safety

I LOVE stoplight cameras. I wish there were more.
I’d like to see every single driver that runs a red light get a fine.

I also want the cameras to be reliable, they should get a shot of both the license plate and driver.

Speed enforcement cameras? Sure, but I think the traffic lights are more important.

 

Fine if the light timing is proper for the speeds and intersection size, but that isn't always the case. Pennsylvania yellows are noticeably shorter than neighboring NJ. The use of cameras in Philly may not have lead to changes in accident rates because of that. Instead of collisions because people were crossing the intersection when the yellow turned red, there were ones cause people had to hard brake to avoid being in the intersection when the short yellow turned red. Then some jurisdictions may have shortened their yellow timing to catch more with the camera.

 

IMHO; that isn't a "good" reason to remove traffic cams!! I believe the real reason is that the city or county don't own any of that equipment and it's under a lease/contract/maintenance deal - ergo cost over-runs. Win-Win to the company that has that contract and possibly bonuses for exceeding a certain amount of revenue generation. Ergo, incentives to shorten yellow lamp timing - which causes another dangerous situation. Another issue out here is the ticket goes against the driver, not the car - so if there isn't a clear picture of the driver, as the owner of the car, as he/she is committing the infraction - the ticket doesn't stick. Just some a**hole running a stop light.

 

There is not getting revenue for tickets, and then there is paying a third party camera company some guaranteed amount every period.

 

The value of traffic cams is often obscured by the contracts that allow the TC (Traffic Cam) provider to adjust the camera and light timing to maximize the fines and therefore their share of the take.

There was a trial run of a TC installation in my town where the camera installation was free and a portion of the fines were turned over to the TC provider. An audit disclosed that the lights were adjusted by the TC provider to create very, very short duration yellows and thus a larger number of people running red lights. There was also a rise in the number of rear end collisions as people slammed on the brakes when the light switched to yellow.

They project was shut down by the city.

Personally, I like the idea of having most of the cars locked to the same max speed. My car does a pretty effective job of spotting the road side signs. Further, it automatically notifies me when I exceed the speed limit. It would be only one more step to reduce the car speed in those situations.

 

If you want to have a machine making decisions for you, I can respect your choice. I however, would prefer that I make the decisions and the machine quietly obeys. I hope you can respect my decision.

 

While I respect your desire to retain manual control, the mixture of manual and automated traffic streams really complicates things. Imagine driving down the highway without a consensus on what direction traffic is going to travel in each lane. Massive traffic jams and gridlock would ensue. But you can take the same number of cars and make their travel VERY predictable by requiring that all of them follow the same rules in the same way. The result is that you have roads that can handle 10 times the traffic at higher rates of speed with very simple control logic.

There is a road near here that uses radar to determine how many cars are waiting in each lane of the intersection and how many are approaching and at what speed. It's similar to the video camera design that is explained here ( https://cityofowasso.com/DocumentCenter/View/3083/Traffic-Detection-Systems?bidId= )

We already live in a culture that imposes certain restrictions on our travels. One way streets. Stopping for pedestrians. Right turn on red lights, etc. We already have maximum speeds mandated for every road that we travel on. It's easy enough to standardize the speeds at which we travel.

Note that the idea of standardized control mandates that you use the same software for all cars. None of this "neural network learning" for deciding where to turn right. As Elon Musk finally admitted recently, the exact behavior of one of his cars self trained by a neural network is not predictable.

 

I can respect that, as long as you accept that you already do rely on machines to make some decisions for you.

 

It would seem that 'Vision Zero' is somewhat appropriately named.....