A scheme has just been revealed in Florida of shortening yellow light times. The reduced yellow intervals have, in some areas, doubled the tickets given to citizens for running red light. According to one official, the practice may raise money for the state but makes traffic extremely unsafe. “A one-second increase in yellow time results in a 40 percent decrease in severe red-light related crashes,” said one DoT official. In some communities the yellow light interval change was bellow the nationally mandated time limit. After being discovered the counties upped the time back to national levels but did not tell the drivers who were ticketed under the old light time. WTSP 1o News is following up the story in the days to come.
It is shocking to me that communities would rank nailing tax payers with tickets for traffic violations above safety. If communities need more revenue, it shouldn’t be raised from endangering, and shifty means that penalize people for otherwise ordinary behavior.
My understanding is that, correct me if I am wrong, if a driver sees a yellow light, he or she should stop most of the time. However, I do not think they should reduce the yellow light interval significantly. It is for everyone’s safety.
In Germany people are obsessive about traffic lights — in part because cars zoom the moment a light turns green, my memory is you get a yellow-green combination to let you know it’s about time to go. Running a red light when there’s traffic is out of the question, near-suicidal.
My question would be what is the time delay between your light turning red and the “opposing cars” light turning green. If the time from my initial yellow to their initial green is the same then I dont think this would negatively effect safety, if anything people would realize the yellow is shorter and try to run the lights less. Just a thought.