The federal government recommends that yellow lights at intersections last for at least three seconds before turning red. So why are so many yellows being timed at 2.5 seconds? And why are those fleeting yellows often located at intersections where red-light cameras are installed?
The mandarins tell us that red-light cameras are for our own safety, and that we need more of them than the 150 already in New York City. “While we wait,” city transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said last month, “New Yorkers are dying on our streets.”
So why increase the mayhem by cutting the duration of the yellow light by half a second? The city continues to deny that it did so, but both a Post investigation and a AAA study found intersections with cameras had yellow lights that lasted as little as 2.53 seconds, 15% less than the city’s standard.
Three motorists subsequently brought a class-action suit against the city.
Other reporters around the country are finding similar situations. In Florida, WTSP-TV in St. Petersburg found that the operators of cameras had reduced yellow-light times by half a second without telling motorists. The same thing happened in 2008 in San Bernadino, Calif., whose city council then ordered the removal of the cameras. Half a million people are getting refunds in a New Jersey class action after complaining about yellow-light timing when they were ticketed.
It’s unclear whether the cameras even increase safety. A 2005 Washington Post study found that “the number of accidents has gone up at intersections with the cameras.”
Though many studies have found that cameras reduce side impact or “T-bone” accidents involving cars heading at right angles to each other, the same studies also find an increase in rear-end collisions. The Virginia Transportation Research Council released a study that said the net effect of red-light cameras was more accidents, not fewer.
In Chicago, Inspector General Joe Ferguson said there is no evidence that the city was correct in saying either that red-light cameras have led to a decrease in accidents or are installed at especially dangerous intersections. (Chicago, being Chicago, also faced a $2 million red-light camera bribery scandal — the company that installed the cameras paid off a city official — and its IG has discovered that the Second City is somehow spending $13,800 a year on maintenance for the cameras in addition to their $25,000 purchase price.)
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, undeterred, has announced a plan to install more cameras around schools and parks with an eye toward picking up another $30 million in revenue this year to pay for “children’s programs.”
Here I invoke Smith’s Rule of Children: Whenever politicians mention “the children,” they are promoting a policy idea they love that has very little to do with children.
Mayor Bloomberg, citing two state senators who opposed the installation of more cameras in the city, said this spring, “Maybe you want to give those phone numbers [of the politicians] to the parents of the child when a child is killed. It would be useful so that the parents can know exactly who’s to blame.”
Because, obviously, every child killed in a traffic accident would have survived if only there had been an red-light camera nearby.
Bloomberg has also said he would love to publish the names of every citizen ticketed by a camera. Tread carefully, Mr. Mayor. It’s almost like your last name is becoming synonymous with invading people’s privacy.
Last year, the city sent out 668,709 red-light camera tickets, down from 880,922 in 2011, leading to a decline in revenue from $60.3 million to $42.7 million last year. Hence the need to shorten yellow light times. It turns out that motorists get wise to the cameras after a while.
Ah, but the decrease in ticketing was all part of the plan, Mayor Bloomberg declared, swearing he was delighted by this trend toward greater “safety.” You can draw your own conclusions about the motivations of an administration that once fined a 19-year-old Bronx man for sitting on a milk crate. (Cops told the baffled scofflaw, Jesse Taveras, to “blame Bloomberg,” Taveras said.)
Make Mayor Bloomberg even happier: Reduce those revenues further! Study up on the maps of red-light cameras on the Web. And if you get a ticket, fight it. Often there’s a mistake in the citation, or you can win by not agreeing to “stipulate” that the picture be allowed into evidence (it may be disallowed if no one from the camera company is in court to support it). You can also win if you can convince a judge that you acted out of necessity — that slamming on the brakes would have been reckless.
Because it’s all about safety, right?
kyle.smith@nypost.com