Canada: Intersection Cameras

The citizens of Manitoba are not death crazed scofflaws blowing through red lights as a hobby as some officials and media would have you believe. In fact fatalities caused by red light running are a are extremely rare, maybe one every few years if that. If we take Century and Silver as an example of a busy intersection we find a red light violation rate that ,in a bad month is around 45 violation. This intersection sees some 47,000 vehicles per day (weekday counts). This gives us some where over 1,000,000 vehicles through this intersection per month. Now consider that over 80% of all red light violations occur with in the first few tenths of a second and can be considered non dangerous, as most intersections have a 2 second all red phase. This means that less then 9 violations out of 1,000,000 can even be considered dangerous, and only a small fraction of these ever result in a collision. Other then anecdotal public opinion the police have failed horribly in proving any increase in red light running or for the need for RLCs.
Winnipeg streets get safer every year. Collision, injuries and fatalities have been constant or have declined almost every single year since records have been kept.
When you take into consideration that there are more drivers driving more kilometers every year, and thus more chances for collisions to happen, it is amazing to see a steady and ongoing trend towards safer streets. The only noticeable change is a slight increase in non injury collisions. While most people will agree that some days it doesn't seem like the roads are safer in fact they are. Most of the perceived issues, I believe, stem from ignorant, impolite and poorly trained drivers and the fact that our street are poorly maintained/engineered and are more crowed then ever before. These things that photo enforcement cannot counter act.There are presently 48 intersection cameras that will have issued almost 300,000 tickets!! Well, that should equate to a whopping jump in safety. Strange the death and injury rate has not changed in the past few years . The city auditors report on photo enforcement notes large increases in collisions at monitored intersections, as compared to a 7% average increase for non monitored intersections (Auditors report). Well not that surprising..... Studies going back 10 years and more have shown little or no safety benefits to red light photo enforcement. Virtually the only ones showing any benefits have been done or paid for by parties that have something to gain, like the police, insurance companies, governments etc.
So RLC's are not the answer (at least from a safety stand point). What can be done? The simplest thing is lengthen the yellow light cycle! Seems only obvious and it is simple to do and costs next to nothing to implement. How big of an improvement can this make on violations?, and do not people just get used to it and start running more reds as time goes on? The answers are huge and no, yet the city refuses to change yellow light timings despite the overwhelming evidence that it can dramatically reduce red light violations. A test in Virginia saw a reduction in violation of some 96% when the yellow light was lengthened by 1.5 second. The RLC was removed and three years later this very wide intersection has kept this reduction almost intact at 90% reduction despite a rapid population growth in the area. While this is an extreme case adjustments of a few tenths of a second can often reduce violations by 30%-70%. The city is on record as being unwilling to change light timing at monitored intersections. The city also refuses to make its contract with ACS public despite a Freedom of Information application. Contracts in other locations have often had clauses in them that prevent the city from changing any aspects of the intersections including light timing. A quick check I did some time ago shows that of Winnipeg's 24 (original) cameras 75% are 1km or more away from any of Winnipeg 30 most dangerous intersections and over 62% are several kilometers or more away from any intersection of note. It certainly does not look like the police are very concerned about safety, judging by their camera placement. There is in fact no documented policy to determine where a camera goes, so the police are allowed to place them where the most money can be made.
Many people believe falsely that photo enforcement is widely supported. One of the studies done by the NHTSA (National Survey of speeding and other unsafe driving actions, Volume III countermeasures, by John Boyle) in the US said there was a 70% support for photo enforcement, similar to the 71% claimed for Winnipeg. What is not promoted is that 35% of respondents had never heard of photo enforcement. The other 65% maintained varying degrees of knowledge on the subject. Keep in mind that these survey questions are often supplied by the camera vendors to elicit a positive response, and that no camera program has yet to pass a free vote by the public in North America. I think it is safe to say there are but a select few in our city who actually have any factual information regarding these so-called safety devices and their alternatives. Lets face the facts most of the respondents could not provide a qualified answer to the question. Most drivers can’t even tell you the size of their tires or engines in their cars let alone anything about photo enforcement other then what the proponents spout courtesy of your tax dollars and the willing media. If the questions asked by the Winnipeg Free Press/ Probe Research poll had been stated differently, or if some attempt to present unbiased information was made, the results would be VERY different. This is very misleading ruse that helps dampen the public back lash as most people now believe they are in the minority if they disagree, when in fact they’re not.
One of the studies often quoted (and used to promote our program) by the proponents of automated enforcement is the Oxnard, California, study (IIHS April 26, 2001). This insurance industry-sponsored study made great claims, purportedly showing RLCs reduce crashes. There are major issues with this report, including the fact that no specific crash types were identified (red light running accidents are not even identified). RLC intersections were not analyzed separate for the other intersections either. The study claims a 5.4% over all reduction in intersections crashes and a 40% reduction of RLV’s, (Red Light Violations) at the 11 monitored intersections. Santa Barbra, a neighboring town with out cameras saw a 10.2% reduction in overall collisions! Further more lengthening of yellow lights can reduce RLVs as much as and often many times more than enforcement and this is also acknowledged in this study. The study also had to redefine the definitions of intersection approaches from 100 ft prior to the intersection to the cross walk in order to hide the increase in rear end accidents that occurred. Perhaps the best and most comprehensive study on RLCs was done in Melbourne Australia, by David Andreassen, covering 10 years and 41 camera sites done over 10 years ago( this study was not considered by the police). The study could find no correlation between monitored intersections and non monitored intersections, other then a large increase in rear end collisions, and, contrary to expectations an increase in red light collisions at many sites! Many other locations found similarly poor results when the data is properly analyzed.
The three main bodies of information the city used in its decision to roll out photo enforcement were the Oxnard study, the Washington, DC, police department, and The National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running (http://www.stopredlightrunning.com). We have covered the first two to some degree, so let's look at this site. At first it appears to be an grass roots organization like MADD, but for red light runners. Impressive enough. Look deeply and you will find that that it is a lobby organization funded and founded by camera vendors, the biggest contributor being none other then our own contractor, ACS! It quickly becomes clear the police/city did nothing more then look at pro -camera information provided by the vendors and did nothing that could be described as an "evaluation" or "study". The only thing that was studied was how to implement the program with the least amount of public backlash.