Denver Must Prove Red-Light Cameras Improve Safety 433
An anonymous reader writes "An audit of accidents at Denver intersections where red light cameras were installed versus increasing the length of the yellow light shows little difference in the results. In a case of putting the public ahead of the corporation, the Denver auditor is recommending canceling the red light camera program unless the city can prove a public-safety benefit." I hope that private citizens offering analysis or recommendations are treated fairly.
Changed my mind (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to think the intersection camera were a good idea. However, I changed my mind once a I listened to a local police chief explain that in his city traffic accidents had actually risen at the intersections where the cameras were in use. Folks would brake suddenly when they saw the camera causing the vehicle behind them to rear-end them. Once he said that I knew he was right. People would do that.
The cameras are a good idea in theory, but the real-world unintended consequences are too costly.
Both (Score:5, Interesting)
Long yellows to give everyone a chance to stop, and red light cameras to catch the bastards who don't take that chance.
Here come the quotas.. watch out (Score:4, Interesting)
Inevitably these are the words that will issue from some Superior Officer's mouth each morning so they can "prove" that red light camera improve safety even around the areas they're installed where there are no cameras.
And what follows is destroyed and distorted paperwork, reclassification of incidents, motorists NOT being issued tickets on certain roads, people being "let go" and individuals involved in accidents being encouraged to "work it out between yourselves so it doesn't go on your record".
We KNOW what happens when police are under pressure to produce downward statistics in crime each year, or in this case downward statistics for accidents. Policing becomes less professional and more third-worldy, even criminal.
Some examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3mmuZsHmv8 [youtube.com]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/13/ex-nypd-cop-we-planted-ev_n_1009754.html/ [huffingtonpost.com]
It's not what the cops want to do, it's what well-intentioned people who think policing should be subject to the same kinds of productivity and performance metrics that other industries are subject to inadvertently cause.
Telling cops they need to produce such and such numbers for this and that reason is a stupid idea who time has never existed in the first place. Telling them they need to prove by stats that the camera improve intersection safety is a big mistake.
The way to work this is to let them do what from their experience they feel will work and have the insurance companies by law turn over their statistics to the government or the universities who then data mines it on an ongoing basis to see what works for traffic safety and what doesn't and what's trending and what isn't.
Don't make the source of the data also the beneficiary of the data when it leans a certain way. Also don't punish them when it leans some other way.
The police don't cause crime so it's not theirs to reduce year over year. Society causes crime, the economy causes crime, bad parenting and poor family environment causes crime, lousy neighborhoods cause crime. Not policing.
The vast majority of police forces do what they can in the best way they've learned how and results are really pretty good in most areas. But the lions share of the credit or blame goes to the population who either is or is not inclined to follow the law in the first place.
Squeezing departments to produce numbers is a sure fire way to have them enact a quota system which is a sure fire path to corruption which is a sure fire path to contempt for cop on the part of the citizenry which is a sure fire way to increase crime as the years go by.
We need to do everything we can to produce and maintain a justice system that honorable and equitable and run like hell from anything that tends to corrupt that system.
Re:Are yellows in Denver really short? (Score:5, Interesting)
But there seems to be a paradox wherein drivers may become accustom to the longer yellows, diminishing the benefits...
My second link was to a series of studies that show that the benefits do not diminish with time. It is possible that longer yellows may make intersections that do not have the extended yellows even more dangerous. However, the solution to that is to extend those yellows as well. The most decisive study on the issue I saw was one which showed that if the rate of decceleration necessary to come to a complete stop was below 8 feet per second squared, drivers were virtually certain to stop, while if the required decceleration was above 12 feet per second squared, drivers were virtually certain to continue.
Re:I Seem To Recall (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as you're not at the bottom, you're fine. People in general, given the opportunity, would make as much profit as they could from what ever they could, society be damned.
The best that I can put together is that if you're at the top or in charge, you're living the American Dream and we don't want to punish anyone that makes it to that level. But if you're at the bottom you screwed up or God is punishing you so you deserve to be there. We have people making $40k a year cursing at the person making $15k for "stealing their money" and "needing to work harder". But they let the person making $1M a year slide because some day that person making $40k is going to be a part of the $1M and they don't want their money taken away.
The CEO of what had been one of the largest privately held mortgage lenders was sentenced Tuesday to more than three years in prison for his role in a $3 billion scheme that officials called one of the biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history.
The 40-month sentence for Paul R. Allen, 55, is slightly less than the six-year term sought by federal prosecutors.
vs
A homeless man robbed a Louisiana bank and took a $100 bill. After feeling remorseful, he surrendered to police the next day. The judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
Roy Brown, 54, robbed the Capital One bank in Shreveport, Louisiana in December 2007. He approached the teller with one of his hands under his jacket and told her that it was a robbery.
The teller handed Brown three stacks of bill but he only took a single $100 bill and returned the remaining money back to her. He said that he was homeless and hungry and left the bank.
The next day he surrendered to the police voluntarily and told them that his mother didn’t raise him that way.
Brown told the police he needed the money to stay at the detox center and had no other place to stay and was hungry.
In Caddo District Court, he pleaded guilty. The judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison for first degree robbery.