Denver must prove red light cameras improve public safety

[thewayne]

The Denver Auditor's Office last week issued a report about the two programs that use video and photos to catch traffic violators, saying they should be shut down unless the city can prove they are a public-safety benefit.

At four intersections, the cameras brought in $1.5 million from January to October and cost $700,000 for the contract. I'm sure the City will be able to prove that they are reducing accidents, and that the revenue being generated is purely a side benefit. But proving correlation and causation will be more difficult as accidents are down throughout the city.

I particularly like this line: "City traffic engineer Brian Mitchell said fewer crashes are being recorded at intersections where photo-red-light enforcement has been set up and where yellow-light clearance time has been lengthened." A lot of municipalities have shortened the yellow cycle to catch more people, among them the Township of Paradise Valley, AZ, has been caught having done this. If Denver lengthened the yellow cycle, that would argue in their favor that it has been effective. The one thing that I've never understood that more municipalities don't implement is the lagging left turn arrow, where the arrow comes on after the green cycle. Very safe way to improve traffic control, Tucson does it, I haven't seen it in many other cities.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_19576425?source=rss

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/12/20/1345254/denver-must-prove-red-light-cameras-improve-safety

Comments

[silveradept]

I think some of our cities have them, but they implement them as "if someone comes up to the intersection after the standard left turn arrow", which is great on the intersections that have it, and bad for the ones that don't.