So nearly all of you know about those little pesky cameras on top of traffic lights now-a-days that catch you when you least expect it! You go home praying they didn’t catch you, then MONTHS later you receive a ticket in the mail and there goes your new dress, weekend away, bottle of whiskey, or possibly your rent.
The reason these cameras were installed is because Los Angeles County promised that they would reduce collisions caused by drivers, driving through red lights, but the truth of the matter is that 80% of the tickets go to right hand turners, not red light runners.
So what are these cameras really for?
Some researchers and traffic engineers question the enforcement strategy.
“I’ve never . . . seen any studies that suggest red light cameras would be a good safety intervention to reduce right-turning accidents,” said Mark Burkey, a researcher at North Carolina A&T State University who has studied photo enforcement collision patterns.
Not all cities have right turn cameras because some don’t believe they cause enough problems to justify the expense and the tickets they cause, but Los Angeles seems to think otherwise.
“We’re kind of very leery about right turns. . . . They’re not really unsafe per se,” said Pasadena’s senior traffic engineer, Norman Baculinao. Only one of that city’s seven camera-equipped intersection approaches is set up to monitor right-turn violations, he said.
“This is intended to be a traffic safety program. People who make right turns generally are going at a low speed,” and resulting accidents tend to be a “sideswipe at most,” he said.
It is true that the cameras have helped to reduce red light violations and broadside crashes, but they have also caused more less serious rear-end collisions caused from people stopping suddenly to avoid a tickets.
Each city has the choose of what type of cameras they would like set up - left turn, straight through, right turn or a combination.What appears to be most important is preventing “left-turn crashes because they are the most serious and common, said Doug Hecox, an agency spokesman.” Each city has the choose of what type of cameras they would like set up - left turn, straight through, right turn or a combination. So it seems that there would be no reason to have a right-turn camera, only left-turn or straight-through cameras.
But not everyone agrees…
Officials in Los Angeles and other cities that cite large percentages of right-turn violators — Covina, South Gate, Lancaster, Baldwin Park, Walnut and Montebello — say the infractions increase hazards, particularly for pedestrians. “People have this misconception that it’s OK to whip a right turn on a red light,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Jon White, with Lancaster’s photo enforcement program.
Right turns at red lights have “always been associated with some danger,” said transportation researcher Richard Retting of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “Enforcing against drivers who don’t stop at all has the potential to make intersections safer.”
“They could actually hit a pedestrian,” he said. “We’ve been lucky, [but] it’s certainly, for us, a very real safety problem.”
Montebello officials say their city’s camera program — which involves mostly right-turn tickets — is about safety, not money.
Still, Superior Court estimates show that Montebello’s cameras have one of the county’s highest revenue-generating rates, bringing in about $90,000 per month from five approaches to three intersections.
At that rate, Montebello’s cameras are bring in two times what they cost.
8 out of every 10 tickets was given to a right-turn infraction in the past year and none of them had caused any major accidents, and the cost is starting to add up for drivers.
Twenty-three of the county’s 88 cities — along with Los Angeles County and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — have installed red light camera systems. All red light running violations in Los Angeles County carry a hefty $381 penalty — with one notable exception.
Tickets for improper right turns at traffic signals in the city of Los Angeles carry a fine of only $159.
Why the sudden drop in price? Is it because they know that possibly the right-turn ticket is a bit silly? $159 is still a BIG chunk of change one something you don’t want to spend. It appears that no matter what these camera’s do force people to drive slower, look around, and overall be safer drivers. But that doesn’t mean that the city isn’t using them to their advantage.
Some experts caution that violation rates aren’t necessarily the best measure of intersection hazards or improvements.
“From an engineering standpoint, we know the locations we would want are different than what the [camera] vendor would want,” said Stephen Yanez, a Downey engineer. “They are basically looking for locations that have a high violation rate. We are looking for locations with a high collision rate. . . . Collision rate is not necessarily related to violation rate.”
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Photo by VictoriaPic
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