Peter Bronson, a columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, is seeing red: red-light cameras, that is. The Cincinnati city council wants to install red-light cameras, even though the Virginia Department of Transportation found that such cameras lead to a 29-percent increase in accidents. The Cincinnati council, Bronson suggests, may be more motivated by ticket revenues than safety.
Even worse, Bronson goes on to say, is a city proposal to spend $100 million building a four-mile streetcar line. Bronson then quotes the Antiplanner at an embarrassing length, even including a sidebar of quotes about the effects of streetcars on taxes and other issues.
Some of the medicine used to use before the invention of buy generic cialis . The effects of serious dogbites can be devastating for all best viagra pills involved. Usually, these generic levitra professional medicines are ought to be taken orally with a glass full of water without crushing or breaking it. Ed, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, to name a few. cialis samples check out over here Bronson could be accused of being one-sided were it not for the fact that most articles on streetcars are just as one-sided in the other direction; all Bronson is doing is presenting the less-heard side. And in the few places where he makes an error, it is on the side of the streetcars.
For example, Bronson says that Portland light-rail and streetcars carry only 2.3 percent of regional travel. They wish. In fact, they carry less than 1 percent of travel — the other 1.3 percent or so is buses. He also does not mention that those buses carried a greater percentage of travel (2.6 percent) before they were hampered by the high costs of rail.
Still, we can hope that Bronson’s article tosses a cold dose of reality on the Cincinnati city councilors who are hot to throw a hundred million dollars or so on streetcar construction. As the Antiplanner always says, “cities that think they have a huge pile of money to waste on rail transit should give the money back to the taxpayers.”
This would be a good place to mention the National Motorist’s Association:
http://www.motorists.org/
They actually advocate driver’s rights.
Thanks
JK
First of all, I have no strong feelings about red-light cameras whatsoever. But:
In his first treatise on “junk science” (http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=62#more-62), the AP tells us that, Because there is no real scientific support for planning, planners instead turn to junk science. According to the AP, one hallmark of junk science involves assum(ing) that correlation proves causation.
In today’s Bronson article, we find the following:
A study by the Virginia Department of Transportation found that accidents increased 29 percent at intersections with red-light cameras
In other words, there is a correlation (though we don’t know if it’s statistically significant) between red-light cameras and accidents.
But how does the AP report such correlation? By assum(ing) that correlation proves causation. Witness:
the Virginia Department of Transportation found that such cameras lead to a 29-percent increase in accidents.
The Bronson article does not report that cameras LEAD to an increase in accidents; our resident Junk Scientist added that little gem.
But here’s something the AP didn’t report: in the Washington Post analysis referenced by Bronson, the DC chief of police notes that traffic fatalities decreased from 69 in 2003 to 45 in 2004. Why doesn’t the AP use the same junk science logic here and assume that this decrease in fatalities is caused by the red-light cameras?
Could it be that, like Robert Putnam, the AP was “reading (his) preconceived notions into data sets” and “ignor(ing) his numbers and claim(ing) exactly the opposite of what those numbers said”?
Here’s some more research on red-light cameras (http://www.iihs.org/research/qanda/rlr.html) that tells a different story from the one the AP would have us believe.
In addition to reducing red light violations, cameras have been shown to reduce intersection crashes. In Oxnard, California, significant citywide crash reductions followed the introduction of red light cameras, and injury crashes at intersections with traffic signals were reduced by 29 percent. Front-into-side collisions  the crash type most closely associated with red light running  also were reduced by 32 percent overall, and front-into-side crashes involving injuries were reduced by 68 percent. An Institute review of international red light camera studies concluded that cameras reduce red light violations by 40-50 percent and reduce injury crashes by 25-30 percent.
Some studies have reported that while red light cameras reduce front-into-side collisions and overall injury crashes, they can increase rear-end crashes. Because the types of crashes prevented by red light cameras tend to be more severe than rear-end crashes, research has shown there is a positive aggregate benefit. A recent study sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration evaluated red light camera programs in seven cities. The study found that, overall, right-angle crashes decreased by 25 percent while rear-end collisions increased by 15 percent. Results showed a positive aggregate economic benefit of more than $18.5 million over 370 site years, which translates into a crash reduction benefit of approximately $39,000 per site year. The authors concluded that the economic costs from the increase in rear-end crashes were more than offset by the economic benefits from the decrease in right-angle crashes targeted by red light cameras. Not all studies have reported increases in rear-end crashes. The Cochrane Collaboration (an international organization that conducts systematic reviews of the scientific literature on public health issues) recently reviewed 10 controlled before-after studies of red light camera effectiveness in Australia, Singapore, and the United States. Using techniques of meta-analysis, the authors estimated a 16 percent reduction in all types of injury crashes and a 24 percent reduction in right-angle crashes. The review did not find a statistically significant change in rear-end crashes.
From reading just this little bit on red-light cameras, I get the impression that:
1. The cameras encourage people not to run red lights
2. Because people are running fewer red lights, there are fewer “t-bone” crashes
3. Because people are more likely to stop at yellow/red lights, there are more rear-end crashes, because people are stopping quickly
4. Because t-bone crashes are more dangerous than rear-end crashes, the net effect of the cameras on public safety is positive.
But, as always, “more research is needed”.
I think D4P has shown well a typical strategy employed here – massaging the information to effect an outcome or have an argument. And I believe it was last week I pointed out another instance of Randal C = C.
But today I would, rather, like to focus on another typical strategy: cherry-picking.
Thre was a choice to focus on one study, then trumpet that to the heavens to insert the message.
But the evidence doesn’t support the assertion: red-light cameras reduce fatalities and the evidence is unclear on total accidents [1.* 2. 3. ], with some metaanalyses showing a reduction (e.g., 1.), and others (e.g. 2,3) statistical insignificance.
Trumpeting one finding while ignoring all others isn’t a good indicator of mad research skillz, no?
DS
* In terms of crash effects, most studies contain methodological flaws that, to varying degrees, either overestimate (failure to adjust for regression to the mean) or underestimate (comparison with nearby signalized intersections affected by cameras) crash effects. Mindful of these limitations, the research generally indicates that camera enforcement can significantly reduce injury crashes at signalized intersections, in particular right-angle injury crashes. Most studies reported increases in rear-end crashes following camera installation. Taken together the studies indicate that, overall, injury crashes, including rear-end collisions, were reduced by 25–30% as a result of camera enforcement.
I’ve been skeptical of the studies I’ve seen in the news where they talk about an increased number of accidents. Minneapolis saw theirs reduced, IIRC, during their brief fling. And number of accidents is a poor way of measuring safety. We all know that side impact crashes tend to be pretty gnarly. If red light cameras reduce the number of people running red lights, it stands to reason they’re reducing the likehood of those. Then it becomes a matter of how one values the increased safety of that reduction versus the increase in rear end accidents.
But that misses the bigger picture. If the number of rear end accidents is increasing because more people are making a point of stopping in time for a red it means :
a) Too many drivers are already far, far too in the habit of “yellow means punch it”.
b) Too many drivers are not leaving a safe following distance between themselves and the car ahead of them.
c) Too many drivers are being inattentive to what other cars around them are doing.
I don’t see how red light cameras cause any of those. If anything, the lack of enforcement of the rules of the road when it comes to traffic lights have lulled people and they’ve picked up these bad habits.
In fact, I would argue the more that is done to time traffic lights to keep traffic flowing, the more that red light cameras are needed. I live right off a major one-way street that has it’s lights timed to try to keep as much traffic flowing on it as possible. One the things a large portion of drivers have learned is that when they finally do come up on a red light on one of the side streets is to try to time it just right so they don’t have to brake. And naturally there are folks who don’t get it quite right and run the light.
Which reminds me, I’ve always found it funny that at the same time there are a group of people in general who run red lights (they ignore the yellow to the point it’s red by the time they enter the intersection), there is another group (probably some cross over) which has picked up the habit of running the red light in the other way. They’re stopped at a red and get going before they have a green. Some do that rolling; you know it, a little gas and then brake, a little gas and then brake until they’re in the intersection. It’s as though they think if their car moves just enough, they’ll cause the light to turn green. And sometimes they end up just going and at that so early that I’ve seen them get through the intersection before it turns green!
Anyway……….. red light cameras, when implemented properly, are a great tool.
The best solution to red light running is to simply lengthen the yellow light time. This reduces t-bone accidents and rear end accidents both. Unfortunately many red light camera companies sometimes require a shorter yellow to ensure a minimal level of income in order to install the cameras.
D4P is correct that correlation is not causation but absent other factors this correlation can reasonably be determined causation as well.
In the long run this will be a battle of studies and each study will come with some baggage. With such uncertainties and a public distrustful of them why install them in the first place? It goes back to money and the governments love of gadgetry. You can pretty much sell them on anything.
The simplest solution to reduce the number of accidents is to insert more intergreen time.
In the UK, there is a significant shift between the traffic light signals and the vehicles movements. Cars run through the amber signal, but start late on the green signal. The same appears to be true in the US, and for the same reasons.
The intergreen time is the time duration between one direction losing green and another direction gaining green. If you increase this, then an all-red period will be introduced. This allows the traffic to clear the intersection, at the cost of some reduction in capacity.
The very last page of the following document indicates the intergeen periods required for a junction in the UK. The same should be true for the US, since the principles are universal.
http://www.standardsforhighways.co.uk/dmrb/vol8/section1/ta1681.pdf
This document may have been superceded. DMRB is such a nasty web-site, that it’s hard to tell. The US equivalent, HCM, is much better written.
If they’re installing red-light cameras, it suggests that they have large junctions, and they are not allowing enough red-time, because they are short of capacity. It’s hard to know without more information, and the article (its noble flattery of Antiplanner aside) doesn’t have too much of this.
E.g.
“intersections with cameras; injuries and fatalities rose 81 percent.” It’s hard to know where to begin with such a piece of fluff.
As for streetcars, the alternative is trolleybus running on bus lanes or capacity-managed regular traffic lanes. Much cheaper. When I think about trams, Jesus’ comment on mausoleums comes to mind. Trams look really good on the outside, gliding along the rails – but inside they’re really just buses, with the same seats as they have on buses, and the same graffiti & gum on the seats too.
This is really funny watching practitioners of a TOTALLY emotionally based “profession” that wouldn’t know a fact of they tripped over one try to accuse the AntiPlanner of ignoring facts.
Facts routinely ignored by planners:
* high density causes congestion
* High density costs more than low density.
* Mass transit costs more than driving a car
* cars that use less energy, per passenger mile than mass transit, are readily available.
* Mass transit is usually slower than driving.
* 1998 is not the warmest year in 400 years. It is merely tied with 1934.
* The earth has been cooling since 1998.
* CO2 is not the most important “greenhouse gasâ€Â, H2O is.
* Historically, Temperature rises THEN CO2 rose. (note to planners: cause cannot follow effect)
Thanks
JK
This really crosses the threshold into Pavlovian. If the Anti-Planner posted that he ate bacon and eggs for breakfast, the usual suspects would post dissertations on the cholesterol content of yolk. Really, are you guys seriously in favor of having the government set up surveillance cameras all over a city to watch our traffic law compliance? Isn’t the same bunch that opposes warrantless wiretapping and then like? How are we supposed to assert innocence at trial? Do we cross examine the camera?
How about this: if a law is important enough to enforce, the police should act like it and station an actual sentient being to monitor enforcement and hand out citations.
This really crosses the threshold into Pavlovian. If the Anti-Planner posted that he ate bacon and eggs for breakfast, the usual suspects would post dissertations on the cholesterol content of yolk.
Whatever.
You must have willingly missed the misstatements and cherry-picking.
I guess it must be OK to misstate and willfully misinform if the ends are against our ideology, right, even if fatalites fall with the cameras?
DS
Really, are you guys seriously in favor of having the government set up surveillance cameras all over a city to watch our traffic law compliance?
Strawman.
That’s not a strawman, that’s the actual policy we’re debating. Do you object to my use of the term “all over”? You can have as many traffic cameras as you have signalized intersections. In fact, the intersections need not even be signalized. Hoboken, NJ passed a municipal ordinance authorizing stop sign cameras. Really. You can look it up.
Dan, I’m not asserting that the policy couldn’t possibly reduce accident rates (although an after the fact citation sent out would seem to me less effective than visible law enforcement presence in the form of a uniform,ed person), I’m asking why you don’t have a civil liberties problem against these systems. I thought liberalism stood in opposition to the surveillance state. Maybe it stands only in opposition to surveillance on national security grounds, but when it comes to state management and monitoring of the minutiae of daily life, well then it’s all to the good as far as y’all are concerned.
My objection is a civil liberties objection. I don’t like being watched and I’d like the ability to confront my accuser.
The AP cited a study that found that “accidents increased 29 percent at intersections with red-light cameras.” The AP then (in junk science fashion) concluded that red-light cameras cause accidents to increase.
I pointed out the AP’s junk science move, and cited some other research on red-light cameras that paints a different picture from the one painted by the AP. Other posters also cited additional research.
The discussion was not centered on whether anyone favors “having the government set up surveillance cameras all over a city to watch our traffic law compliance.”
It seems to me that you (Veddie) created a strawman when you characterized our comments in terms of advocating for red-light cameras.
Here is a 3 1/2 year old link to a stinging comment about Randal, and also Wendell Cox and their employers/clients.
http://www.pkblogs.com/abstractfactory/2004/09/john-tierney-credulous-stenographer.html
Choice quote:
“This doesn’t necessarily mean that Randall O’Toole is a fraud, but how far would you trust someone employed by a think tank that’s run by, and employs, scholars who take money from the tobacco industry to publish junk science about the environmental effects of tobacco? How far would you trust an organization that takes money from Microsoft while Microsoft is under antitrust investigation, then publishes a book about antitrust regulation, and then lies about how much money Microsoft gave them?”*
I always find it interesting that these “think tanks” e.g., CATO, Independence Institute, Heartland, etc., rarely if ever publish in peer reviewed journals that aren’t house organs like Regulation, a house organ of the Heritage Foundation.
* That would be the Independent Institute of Oakland, CA. where I first saw Randal’s attack on rail transit, New Urbanism and Smart Growth, I believe in 2002.
Is that right? Let’s see, many posters on this board seem to favor light rail. Is it possible that these posters are in the employ of Bombardier, Siemens or Kawasaki, or one of other large multi-national corporations — which, I might add make profits (it’s about people, not profits, but yet they persist) — and also produce systems for transit operators. Many posters favor windmills. I shudder to think this, but perhaps they work for that large corporate (I spit when I say the word) player, General Electric, a large windmill turbine producer. Do these posters advocate for the end of the incandescent light bulb? Why they do, and how can one not suspect that they work (if posting for a corporate master could even be fairly described as “work”) for Phillips, which turns out compact fluorescent bulbs by the ton in its factories in China. Oh the web these corporate servants weave…
Of course, another possibility is that the connection is overblown, that intellectuals say what they believe and one can take any number of positions and receive a degree of funding and support, and that in fact there is quite a bit of corporate, union and wealthy individuals’ money on the left side of things. I don’t know though, I couldn’t see supporting a silly idea like light rail unless someone was paying me some big bucks. What do you think?
I really like the idea of minimizing congestion by investing in our signal system.
JK: Another in the endless line of attacke the messenger from the planners who cannot allow the truth to be recongized.
Got any fact based arguments?
Thanks
JK
For the record, the think tank that I worked for 3-1/2 years ago has never received any money from tobacco, oil, or auto companies. I have never been paid a dime by the Independent Institute.
It is my experience that both individuals and companies donate money to people who agree with them. It is rare that people allow their opinions to change based on their sources of money. Ad hominem attacks like the ones mentioned above represent the frustrations of people who do not have the facts on their side.
The money has to be coming from some one or some thing to pay for your junk.
The question is what vested interest(s) are doing so?