Interesting story on red light cameras. The City of Nederland entertained the thought of installing red light cameras some months ago. I'm unsure as to how the cams reduce overall collisions but it's worth a read.
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Red-light cameras apparently reduced overall collisions at dozens of monitored intersections across Texas, according to a state transportation study.
The report, released today by the Texas Department of Transportation, concludes that crashes declined overall by 30 percent at a sampling intersections, many of them in Houston.
"While these results cannot conclusively determine that red light cameras are responsible for the overall reduction in crashes," the report reads, "the presence of the treatment provided some effect on the frequency of crashes at the selected intersections for the limited time period of this analysis."
The study examined crashes from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008 at select intersections at 12 cities required to report crashes under a new state law.
The data show that right-angle collisions reduced by 43 percent, while rear-end collisions increased by 5 percent, mirroring some other studies across the nation.
The study comes as the Houston Police Department is preparing to release a study of the city's 70 red-light cameras. Mayor Bill White said last week that the cameras appear to reduce the rate of reported accidents at monitored intersection approaches.
matt.stiles@chron.com
Source: Houston Chronicle
Thursday, December 04, 2008
State study: Red light cameras appear to cut collisions
Posted by Jeff Ortiz at 12:42 AM
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2 comments:
A Texas judge invalidated a traffic ticket from an automated red-light camera on the grounds that the company running the camera did not have a private investigator license. New Texas legislation regulating certain electronic legal evidence work is causing problems for robo-cop traffic enforcement. See deails: http://legal-beagle.typepad.com/wrights_legal_beagle/2008/12/e-discovery-forensics-private-investigator-license-for-computer-data-collection-and-assessment.html
Opps. I misspoke in my comment submitted earlier. The Texas judge did not invalidate the ticket. He said the red-light camera company was acting illegally. In light of that ruling, motorists are now seeking to have tickets thrown out. -Ben
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