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Tuesday, November 01, 2005Breaking news story: Big Brother causes more harmIt is interesting to note that intersections with red light cameras are causing (hat tip: Instapundit)more accidents than had previously been occurring. This seems to be a common problem among everywhere that has red light cameras.
This is also a common problem with government solutions. They find high profile issues that really are not that bad and do their darnedest to artificially fix them (while collecting money) when the market would naturally do so. The problem the government wanted to solve was crashes in intersections. Their theory was that most crashes occur because of people running red lights...and this may very well have been true. But, at the same time, when people know that there is a dangerous intersection, they will tend to drive more cautiously. If it is a super busy intersection, they will drive aggressively (trying not to get stuck at the light for another red light), but other people are watching out for that and are willing to wait until those red light crossing idiots finish crossing. The real red light issue would probably come from less busy intersections where people are not stopped at the intersection when their light turns green. Because of that, they will not as likely see a red light crosser coming. When red light cameras are put up, the punishment for even safe red light crossing is increased dramatically and so people will do it less. But this also means that people may have to brake harder to keep from crossing on a red...even when they could have made a legal crossing. If there is someone following close behind, this is a rear end accident in the making. I imagine this is a much more likely occurence with a red light camera. The market had already decided on a number of allowable red light crossings and crashes and then the politicians decided to alter that market. This alteration has caused driving styles to change and become more dangerous for the time being. Comments:I'd argue that thhe problemt hey wanted to solve was not enough revenue as they would like, so they found a way to collect the revenue. Many cities shorten the times of yellow lights to enhance red-light runners, in order to collect more money. A few extrta dead bodies never bothered a government anyway. i was going to say what halofan said. i think this whole red-light camera idea is more of a revenue generation scheme than a public safety device. if the politicians can couch it in the guise of improving public safety, it's a win-win for them. hopefully stories like these will put the lie to that. note that in the colorado story: "Daily ticket revenue also plunged from $3000 to $1125, giving officials cause to delay voting on a new camera to see if revenue will rebound." if cities are making anywhere near $3000 a day per intersection, that's a major cash cow for them. i wish there was evidence that parking tickets cause accidents... Well, I realize that. I was trying to base my comments on how the politicians tend to sell the idea, not on actual motivations. What they tell the public is that they want to reduce accidents. Also, I am sure that many of them actually are trying to reduce the number of accidents and make money at the same time (or you could say make money and reduce accidents at the same time), but once they find out how much it makes, they use inertia to retain it despite the increase of danger. Well, to be fair, in Virginia, they had installed the red-light cameras, but when they realized that the cameras were causing more harm than good, they got rid of the cameras. Of course, this was the state that banned them, to the dismay of some local politicians (who undoubtably liked the way the cameras helped pad the coffers). Nothing in that article about the severity of accidents. I'd rather bump/be bumped from behind than have some t-bone me when trying to make it through a red where he knew he wouldn't get a ticket. How many more/less fatalities? How many more/less serious injuries? The data in that article is next to worthless. Well, I looked glanced at some similar research articles and it seemed like at the very least t-bone accidents did not decrease, but that bumper to bumper accidents increased dramatically. I did not see any injury/fatality data. |
