You are a Lawbreaker!
"In order to obey the law, you have to break the laws, laws which are unbreakable--the laws of physics."
| Daniel Hayes |
The Problem is the Federal Standards
The abstract and paper are here.
The reason why people run red lights is because federal standards make them run red lights. The standards violate the laws of physics. It is as if the City Council passed a law forbidding gravity. Everyone is guilty. People beating the the light. People slamming on the brakes. People not having enough time to make a turn. People guessing whether to stop or go. These are the behavioral results of physics mistakes that engineers build into the federal standards. Neither red light camera nor police enforcement will ever remedy this. As an example, it is a federal standard to set left turn yellows to 3.0 seconds. But the laws of motion dictate that you need up to 5 seconds more.
The story is true.
This is an account of the red light camera program in the Town of Cary, North Carolina. Dr. Moley represents the real-life person Brad Hudson. Hudson is a civilian, who against the Town of Cary/Redflex contract, evaluates tickets though he is not a sworn police officer. As the video says, Hudson comes to work once a month and without looking at the videos, accuses and convicts everyone. Baby Cookieflex plays the part of Maria, an employee of Redflex. She works at the "Safelight" office in Cary. If you have a problem with the ticket, the Cary police send you to Maria. Maria does indeed say, "Aren't you happy that your $50 goes to public schools? Don't you care about children?" The Town of Cary spreads Redflex's lie to the local TV stations and the newspapers. But Cary never says what percentage goes to schools. By contract, the Town of Cary pays Redflex $49.50 of every $50. That leaves 50 cents to the schools. The contract contains a tiered compensation clause. When the Town of Cary can force more drivers to run red lights, Cary only has to pay Redflex 60%, not the normal 99%. In the end, once Cary takes out its own administrative costs, about $2.50 goes to the schools.
As for the bad physics, this is the problem. While other problems such as Constitution and legal precedent violations are also serious, it is the misapplied physics that fuels the red light camera industry. Traffic engineers all over the world habitually misapply the ITE Yellow Light Interval Formula, the international standard which sets the length of a yellow light. The misapplication countermands Newton's Second Law of Motion and demands that the driver do so too. But neither driver nor any object in this universe can violate a law of motion. And so the error creates a dilemma zone, a section of road along the approach to the intersection, where if you are in it when the light turns yellow, you will have no choice but to run a red light. The dilemma zone is present at every intersection. Eventually everyone will arrive at the wrong time and be in the wrong place when the light turns yellow . . . and will be guilty. The Town of Cary has so far issued 130,000 tickets--more than the population of the Town of Cary. The red light camera companies, in cooperation with the cities, exploit and profit from the error. Worse than the profitting is the forcing of drivers to crash. Even the pro-camera organization IIHS admits that all cities see a 15% increase in rear-end crashes and several cities, including Raleigh, North Carolina (Cary's neighbor city), see an increase in fatalities.
Traffic engineers defend themselves with a statement like, "millions of vehicles travel on our nation's roadways every day at signalized intersections with yellow interval based on the ITE Yellow light Interval Formula. Vehicles are able to do this without any unusual maneuvers. The Formula used to determine yellow change intervals is based on a sound application of equations of motion." But that statement is half-truth. While millions of vehicles do pass through signalized intersections without incident, it is also true that hundreds of thousands of vehicles (about 2%) do not. 2% run a red light. The 2% is caused by systematic errors in the unsound application of equations of motion. A fundamental principle of science is a sound application of science does not produce an error. Anyway, 2% is a huge volume of vehicles, especially over time. From those 2% comes the business motive of the red light camera company. From a fraction of those 2% come 100,000 crashes each year in the US.
At this website you will find the scientific proof that will get rid of red light cameras once and for all. The legal ground is universal, absolute and irrefutable. The argument is that red light camera laws depend on a standard that violates the Laws of Physics. Any legislation depending on such a standard is null and void itself. The argument applies to any jurisidiction in the world. You can use this argument in the United States as well as the Netherlands. This is called the Canute Legal Precedent. The precedent is named after King Canute who demonstrated in 1020 AD, that not even a king could enforce a law that halts the ocean tides.
The goal of the lawyers, physicists and artists behind this website, is to increase the yellow light lengths at all intersections such that they allow drivers to abide by Newton's Second Law of Motion. We estimate that this will prevent over 99% of all crashes and deaths at signalized intersections. If a city wants to keep red light cameras after that, they certainly can. But there will be no profit in it anymore.