alt Hacker NewsI know this is not related to the legal merits of the case being discussed, but who runs a red light? In my experience, this is an infarction that occurs very infrequently. Speeding or illegal parking happen all the time, but running a red light? Most people are not suicidal.
Edit: Nevermind, I think crossing on yellow and catching a tenth of a second of red counts as running a red light. If it does, it’s something I did myself a few times (of course, all in the distant past, the statute of limitations has pased now …)
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Fairly common for me to see my light turn green and 2-3 more cars continue turning left in front of me through a red light. And not just yellow-light clippers, but cars that would have fully entered the intersection under a red light.
I'm actually all for impartial enforcement of traffic rules via camera systems, but there are problems that need to be solved.
- There need to be standards for evidence required to assign an infraction to a driver.
- There need to be standards for setting yellow light durations to avoid municipalities reducing them to increase revenue
- There needs to be protection against municipalities outsourcing the whole project to a private entity where there is a combined financial incentive from the private entity and the municipality to issue more tickets without adequate oversight.
My town implemented red light cameras around 15 years ago and then took them back out. Locals noticed shortened yellow lights, and there were multiple issues found with how the private operator issued the tickets and with their contract with the municipality.
Where I live, it's common to see at least one person run a red at every major intersection and not just for left turns that couldn't be made due to cross-traffic. Quite often these drivers have expired temp tags which means they don't have insurance because you have to show you registered your vehicle to get insurance. Enforcement is awful so people have been trained to realize there's virtually no consequences to their bad habits. And if they do cause an accident, well it's not like the police will show up in time to stop them from driving off.
In fact, it's so bad that parts of the metro are reinstating red light cameras this year despite having decommissioned them years ago for similar legal reasons as what Florida has run into.
Running reds is a favorite pastime of Boston area drivers. Enter just after the yellow and buzz the pedestrians waiting, lurk in the middle of the road and make a left turn once oncoming traffic is stopped for the red, or just blow it for the hell of it.
Where I live people run them routinely to make left turns. The light timing and spacing are bad, so at some intersections people will keep turning left long past the turn red. There are also several intersections where people cross but get stuck in the middle because another light has to change for traffic to move.
The worst drivers do it a lot more than good drivers.
Depending on where you live it is very common. In chicago when they installed the cameras they lowered the yellow duration to like half a second so people were constantly running them for a while. Then running yellows became normalized, and just ignoring lights from bikers which drivers noticed, and now when traffic is low its not uncommon to see people just treat lights as stop signs if they think no one is coming.
I live in Baltimore and straight-up running of reds is pretty common here.
You can often do it pretty safely - stopped at a light with good visibility to see that there is no cross traffic. But also some people are just insane and blast through lights at 45 without stopping.
Cops haven't cared to enforce it for going on a decade.