BUSTED: Florida Shortened Yellow Lights To Make $camera $$$

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

The next time someone tells you red light scameras are about safety, and all you have to do to avoid a ticket is to obey the law- they're wrong.  It's not about anything but the money.  State law in Florida requires yellow light times be calibrated based on speed limits, however, Florida has now been caught quietly allowing yellow light times to be shortened without notifying drivers:  www.khou.com/news/national/Report-Florida-shortened-yellow-light-lengths-issued-more-red-light-tickets-207515621.html

This would be bad enough if it were just a blatant attempt to rip people off, but it also results in accidents, injuries, and even deaths.  

www.alternet.org/story/145752/cities_shortening_yellow_traffic_lights_for_deadly_profit

How many more scandals like this need to be uncovered before States outlaw scameras, allow for due process in traffic violations, and focus on real, proven traffic safety practices- like decreasing the number of lights and signs, and setting lights correlated with speed limits- and setting speed limits properly.

[jkapp]

This isn't surprising...there's been several examples of this type of red-light camera abuse lately.  There have even been reports that in some instances the money from the cameras end up mostly going to the camera companies, not the local jurisdictions, so they need to have a higher volume of tickets to compensate.

[Deleted]

If they shorten the yellow to make more money, I'm not particularly fussed.  But they do need to factor it in when they time the green for the cross traffic.  I'd object if they compromised safety to boost revenue.

[Angel!]

So many things wrong with this story.  First, drivers never have to be notified when changing a signal timing, so changing a timing without notice isn't sneaky, it is the norm.  When is the last time you recieved a signal timing notice?  You should know they are changed all the time.

I was curious so I pulled up 3 versions of FDOT's Traffic Engineering Manual to see what the big change was.  

September 2012 : www.dot.state.fl.us/trafficoperations/Operations/Studies/TEM/FDOT_Traffic_Engineering_Manual_revised_November_2012.pdf
July 2011 : www.dot.state.fl.us/trafficoperations/pdf/traffic_engineering_manual_revised_july_2011.pdf
June 2010 : www.dot.state.fl.us/trafficoperations/Doc_Library/PDF/3%206r6_10.pdf

The big change - giving the option to use 85th percentile or posted speed, which is actually what is suggested by FHWA & probably what they were doing anyway for the most part.  Honestly, 90% of the time I do a signal I don't have 85% speeds, so we almost always use posted.  If a roadway has the correct posted speed limit, it should match the 85% anyway, although I will admit it often doesn't.  Either a roadway is designed badly or you get neighborhood groups screaming that people are driving too fast & someone will die, etc, etc, then some politician gets involved & a speed limit gets lowered when it shouldn't be lowered against the traffic engineer's judgement.  Getting the 85% speed is going to cost $1-$2K/intersection minimum, so there is cost savings in using posted & adjusting the clearance intervals when necessary. 

What is really probably going on is they are bothering to look at the yellow clearance intervals now & setting them correctly when they were too long.  Especially since it is often easier to round to the next .5 or 1 second & now they are getting more exact.  Which is shortening the yellows in some cases.

As far as accidents, sometimes they do go up.  But, what is more important & overlooked by all these articles, the severity of accidents goes down.  Yeah, you are more likely to be rear-ended, but far less likely to get broadsided.  Statistically you are far, far safer getting into a rear-end accident.  I have looked at thousands of accident reports in my job & seen 1 rear-end fatality.  I have seen dozens & dozens of broadside & approach turn fatalities.  Interesting considering 50-75% of accidents in an urban area are rear-ends, while broadsides & approach turns generally make up 10-20% of the accidents.  So red light cameras increase property damage, but decrease injuries & fatalities.  Which do you find more important - the number of accidents or the type?  Traffic engineers look at both & have a cost associated with each accident type.  A fatality is consider over 20 times the cost of an injury, and an injury is about 7 times the cost of property damage only.  So, in straight BC ratio terms, preventing 1 fatality is worth having 20 more injury accidents or 145 property damage only accidents.  Not sure if that is the proper way to look at it, but that is how my state would calculate it & why a rear-end is much preferred to a broadside type accident, in fact many more rear-ends are preferred to a single broadside accident.

Because I have to pull it out for another task anyway, I pulled out my Highway Safety Manual, which is what traffic engineers use to determine impacts of roadway changes.  All the data is based on before & after studies of actual changes.  Anyway, adding red light cameras & doing nothing else increases rear-ends by 18% decreases approach turns & broadsides by 26%.  So the overall number of accidents often goes up, but severity usually goes down.

Now, I suppose there are some crappy engineers out there or engineers under political pressure to make poor decisions that would intentially time a light clearance below what ITE, FHWA, & in this case FDOT says it must be.  They should lose their license to practice engineering.  Unfortunately politics seems to often work its way into these things, especially if you are a city or county engineer.  If you don't follow the will of the mayor, city council, etc you can lose your job & I have seen it happen.  It totally sucks & one of the reasons I don't work for the govt, but rather a consulting firm where I keep my job because I do honest engineering, not because I bend to the will of a client.  We often do signal timings for city/county/state & not one person in my company would undertime a yellow or red clearance because the client requested us to do so.  I would be risking my license & my job.

[djAdvocate]

the way speed laws are enforced in also a complete scam.  the way the law generally reads is that it can only be enforced if you are driving UNSAFELY.  this is ALWAYS a judgement call, imo.  if you have a straight ahead road, no traffic, and no hazards such as livestock, there is no reason whatsoever that 100mph would not be a safe speed.  but you will get a ticket for that every time.  it is infuriating to be used as a revenue source.

[Virgil Showlion]

May 15, 2013 21:21:45 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

the way speed laws are enforced in also a complete scam.  the way the law generally reads is that it can only be enforced if you are driving UNSAFELY.  this is ALWAYS a judgement call, imo.  if you have a straight ahead road, no traffic, and no hazards such as livestock, there is no reason whatsoever that 100mph would not be a safe speed.  but you will get a ticket for that every time.  it is infuriating to be used as a revenue source.

They do the same thing here. Find the straightest, broadest highway they can, and park their vehicle in a culvert behind an overpass, bridge, etc. at the bottom of a long hill, and rake in the cash.

Regarding red lights, they've been getting better in Canada lately. More major highways have those leading "will turn red" lights 200 meters in advance of intersections, and city streets increasingly feature countdown timers that let you know exactly how many second until the light changes.

And, in fairness, I've never seen a red light camera go off here unless somebody really runs a red light. It wouldn't surprise me if US municipalities were cutting corners to squeeze extra revenue out of people, however.

[EVT1]

Nothing new here- we had a citizen time the lights and - imagine that- the lights were shorted in the high traffic downtown locations.  There was an engineering spec for those lights and they all went short for tickets- the companies that own the cameras being the primary beneficiaries of the new revenue.  Duh- how else do you sell these systems?

Safety has jack to do with it- if it did they would just reprogram the lights where there was a good overlap on redlights.

Pure bullshit.

 

[Opti]

No surprise here, that's how the manufacturer's/reps get them into to towns to start with.
It is a revenue generation tool. Surprised though that the title didn't read something like Government gone wild for camera money or some such.


By me I've been told the green cycle on a cross street light has been changed by some coworkers. No advance notice on that even though it will likely increase my commute time on the days I work.

[Mkitty is pro kitty]

So who gave this the green light?

[mmhmm]

May 15, 2013 21:59:58 GMT -5 @patstab said:

Oh my god, facts will do it everytime.  Amazing isn't it?

Ain't that the truth!  Thanks, angel!

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

May 15, 2013 14:37:29 GMT -5 @missmargarita said:

Paul, don't you have something better to do than sit around all day coming up with conspiracy theories

It's not a theory once it's established- like the IRS intimidating and obstructing conservative, pro-life, and Christian organizations.

Bottom line- I don't like government in people's pockets.  I don't like arbitrary taxes disguised as fines-- accusations of wrong doing that citizens have no opportunity to refute, and all of it being done just so some broke ass government entity can line its pockets with what little is left of people's income after taxes.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

May 15, 2013 23:07:52 GMT -5 EVT1 said:

Nothing new here- we had a citizen time the lights and - imagine that- the lights were shorted in the high traffic downtown locations.  There was an engineering spec for those lights and they all went short for tickets- the companies that own the cameras being the primary beneficiaries of the new revenue.  Duh- how else do you sell these systems?

Safety has jack to do with it- if it did they would just reprogram the lights where there was a good overlap on redlights.

Pure bullshit.

 

Exactly.  Studies show there's no problem virtually anywhere in the country with blatant red-light-running.  It's all poor intersection design.  Virtually every credible traffic engineering best practice shows that the way to reduce accidents at intersections is to lengthen yellow lights, and do exactly as you suggest- make sure there's an "all-red" overlap.

The studies show that, no- drivers do not "adjust to longer yellow light times and figure they have more time to "run" the yellow"- as some suggest would happen (kind of like if you set a sensible speed limit- say 75 mph, that since people drive 70 in a 55, they'd drive 100 in a 75-- not so.  Study after study on speed limits show it really doesn't matter what the speed limit is-- the vast majority of drivers on a given road drive the appropriate speed for the road and conditions without regard to the posted speed limit-- changing posted limits makes NO difference in the rate of speed traveled by the vast majority of drivers).

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

May 15, 2013 21:21:45 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

the way speed laws are enforced in also a complete scam.  the way the law generally reads is that it can only be enforced if you are driving UNSAFELY.  this is ALWAYS a judgement call, imo.  if you have a straight ahead road, no traffic, and no hazards such as livestock, there is no reason whatsoever that 100mph would not be a safe speed.  but you will get a ticket for that every time.  it is infuriating to be used as a revenue source.

I've never seen anything about driving "unsafely" as the trigger.  I've always understood speed limits to be absolute.  Is this not the case?

Anyway- the problem with a lot of these red light tickets-- and another way to tell it's not about safety-- is that in many places where they're employed they have been declared "administrative" - like a parking ticket.  They don't count as moving violations, and you cannot get a court date.  Your options are to pay, or pay.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

May 15, 2013 15:24:52 GMT -5 Angel! said:

So many things wrong with this story.  First, drivers never have to be notified when changing a signal timing, so changing a timing without notice isn't sneaky, it is the norm.  When is the last time you recieved a signal timing notice?  You should know they are changed all the time.

I was curious so I pulled up 3 versions of FDOT's Traffic Engineering Manual to see what the big change was.  

September 2012 : www.dot.state.fl.us/trafficoperations/Operations/Studies/TEM/FDOT_Traffic_Engineering_Manual_revised_November_2012.pdf
July 2011 : www.dot.state.fl.us/trafficoperations/pdf/traffic_engineering_manual_revised_july_2011.pdf
June 2010 : www.dot.state.fl.us/trafficoperations/Doc_Library/PDF/3%206r6_10.pdf

The big change - giving the option to use 85th percentile or posted speed, which is actually what is suggested by FHWA & probably what they were doing anyway for the most part.  Honestly, 90% of the time I do a signal I don't have 85% speeds, so we almost always use posted.  If a roadway has the correct posted speed limit, it should match the 85% anyway, although I will admit it often doesn't.  Either a roadway is designed badly or you get neighborhood groups screaming that people are driving too fast & someone will die, etc, etc, then some politician gets involved & a speed limit gets lowered when it shouldn't be lowered against the traffic engineer's judgement.  Getting the 85% speed is going to cost $1-$2K/intersection minimum, so there is cost savings in using posted & adjusting the clearance intervals when necessary. 

What is really probably going on is they are bothering to look at the yellow clearance intervals now & setting them correctly when they were too long.  Especially since it is often easier to round to the next .5 or 1 second & now they are getting more exact.  Which is shortening the yellows in some cases.

As far as accidents, sometimes they do go up.  But, what is more important & overlooked by all these articles, the severity of accidents goes down.  Yeah, you are more likely to be rear-ended, but far less likely to get broadsided.  Statistically you are far, far safer getting into a rear-end accident.  I have looked at thousands of accident reports in my job & seen 1 rear-end fatality.  I have seen dozens & dozens of broadside & approach turn fatalities.  Interesting considering 50-75% of accidents in an urban area are rear-ends, while broadsides & approach turns generally make up 10-20% of the accidents.  So red light cameras increase property damage, but decrease injuries & fatalities.  Which do you find more important - the number of accidents or the type?  Traffic engineers look at both & have a cost associated with each accident type.  A fatality is consider over 20 times the cost of an injury, and an injury is about 7 times the cost of property damage only.  So, in straight BC ratio terms, preventing 1 fatality is worth having 20 more injury accidents or 145 property damage only accidents.  Not sure if that is the proper way to look at it, but that is how my state would calculate it & why a rear-end is much preferred to a broadside type accident, in fact many more rear-ends are preferred to a single broadside accident.

Because I have to pull it out for another task anyway, I pulled out my Highway Safety Manual, which is what traffic engineers use to determine impacts of roadway changes.  All the data is based on before & after studies of actual changes.  Anyway, adding red light cameras & doing nothing else increases rear-ends by 18% decreases approach turns & broadsides by 26%.  So the overall number of accidents often goes up, but severity usually goes down.

Now, I suppose there are some crappy engineers out there or engineers under political pressure to make poor decisions that would intentially time a light clearance below what ITE, FHWA, & in this case FDOT says it must be.  They should lose their license to practice engineering.  Unfortunately politics seems to often work its way into these things, especially if you are a city or county engineer.  If you don't follow the will of the mayor, city council, etc you can lose your job & I have seen it happen.  It totally sucks & one of the reasons I don't work for the govt, but rather a consulting firm where I keep my job because I do honest engineering, not because I bend to the will of a client.  We often do signal timings for city/county/state & not one person in my company would undertime a yellow or red clearance because the client requested us to do so.  I would be risking my license & my job.

That's a lovely bunch of facts and figures there.  I see what you mean by no need to notify drivers of changes- however, when state law has a formula, and we get a camera, and all of the sudden the formula is scrapped, and the number of tickets issued goes up?  Well, let's just say that while I may have been born at night, it wasn't last night.

There's never been a case I've read about where shortening a yellow light would make an intersection safer.  In fact, most of what I've read indicates that the #1 way to improve safety is to allow for a short period of "all red" lights, and #2 is to lengthen the yellow lights.

What this report showed is that there was collaboration with municipalities to shorten the yellows below federal recommendations and issue more tickets.  The findings were pretty straight-forward, and nobody bothered to even attempt to defend the practice.

TAMPA BAY, Florida -- A subtle, but significant tweak to Florida's rules regarding traffic signals has allowed local cities and counties to shorten yellow light intervals, resulting in millions of dollars in additional red light camera fines.

WTSP Investigators discovered the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) quietly changed the state's policy on yellow intervals in 2011, reducing the minimum below federal recommendations. The rule change was followed by engineers, both from FDOT and local municipalities, collaborating to shorten the length of yellow lights at key intersections, specifically those with red light cameras (RLCs).

While yellow light times were reduced by mere fractions of a second, research indicates a half-second reduction in the interval can double the number of RLC citations -- and the revenue they create. The 10 News investigation stemmed from a December discovery of a dangerously short yellow light in Hernando County.

After the story aired, the county promised to re-time all of its intersections, and the 10 News Investigators promised to dig into yellow light timing all across Tampa Bay.

[djAdvocate]

May 16, 2013 23:34:53 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

May 15, 2013 21:21:45 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

the way speed laws are enforced in also a complete scam.  the way the law generally reads is that it can only be enforced if you are driving UNSAFELY.  this is ALWAYS a judgement call, imo.  if you have a straight ahead road, no traffic, and no hazards such as livestock, there is no reason whatsoever that 100mph would not be a safe speed.  but you will get a ticket for that every time.  it is infuriating to be used as a revenue source.

I've never seen anything about driving "unsafely" as the trigger.  I've always understood speed limits to be absolute.  Is this not the case?

no, it isn't.  not in most places.  there are TWO types of speed law: statutory (absolute) and basic speed law (prudent speed).  MOST roads are governed the the latter.  in those cases, the officer must argue that the speed you are driving is NOT prudent.  that is almost always done on an officer's say so, without any reference to traffic audits, road safety surveys, etc. 

Anyway- the problem with a lot of these red light tickets-- and another way to tell it's not about safety-- is that in many places where they're employed they have been declared "administrative" - like a parking ticket.  They don't count as moving violations, and you cannot get a court date.  Your options are to pay, or pay.

red light stuff is different.  so is failure to stop.  but speeding, which is by far the most common kind of ticket, is often just a scam.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

May 17, 2013 0:08:18 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

May 16, 2013 23:34:53 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

I've never seen anything about driving "unsafely" as the trigger.  I've always understood speed limits to be absolute.  Is this not the case?

no, it isn't.  not in most places.  there are TWO types of speed law: statutory (absolute) and basic speed law (prudent speed).  MOST roads are governed the the latter.  in those cases, the officer must argue that the speed you are driving is NOT prudent.  that is almost always done on an officer's say so, without any reference to traffic audits, road safety surveys, etc. 

Anyway- the problem with a lot of these red light tickets-- and another way to tell it's not about safety-- is that in many places where they're employed they have been declared "administrative" - like a parking ticket.  They don't count as moving violations, and you cannot get a court date.  Your options are to pay, or pay.

red light stuff is different.  so is failure to stop.  but speeding, which is by far the most common kind of ticket, is often just a scam.

Interesting.  I've heard a lot of convoluted ways to get out of a ticket, and I've never heard this one.

[djAdvocate]

May 17, 2013 7:07:50 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

May 17, 2013 0:08:18 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

red light stuff is different.  so is failure to stop.  but speeding, which is by far the most common kind of ticket, is often just a scam.

Interesting.  I've heard a lot of convoluted ways to get out of a ticket, and I've never heard this one.

if you contest on that basis, the judge will generally rule against you if you are grossly over the posted speed limit.  however, if you are near to the speed limits in good driving conditions, the judge sides with the motorist about half the time in CA.  but well under 10% bother to contest BSL tickets.  their loss.

[djAdvocate]

Paul- if you are REALLY interested in this subject, i can start a thread on it.  i was going to challenge a ticket last year, and did about a month's worth of research on it.  i ended up not challenging it because, due to my particular circumstances, the stakes were too high.

[Angel!]

May 16, 2013 23:46:09 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

That's a lovely bunch of facts and figures there.  I see what you mean by no need to notify drivers of changes- however, when state law has a formula, and we get a camera, and all of the sudden the formula is scrapped, and the number of tickets issued goes up?  Well, let's just say that while I may have been born at night, it wasn't last night.

The formula wasn't scrapped. Didn't bother to look at my links did you? The formula was not changed one bit. It is still the same formula used nationwide as recommended by ITE & FHWA and has been in practice since 1985.

There's never been a case I've read about where shortening a yellow light would make an intersection safer.  In fact, most of what I've read indicates that the #1 way to improve safety is to allow for a short period of "all red" lights, and #2 is to lengthen the yellow lights.

Lengthen the yellow lights to the appropriate length if they are too short. Just making yellow lights longer everywhere simply changes driver expectancy & people push the yellow because they know it is longer. And yes, this does happen. Driver expectancy is very important in traffic engineering. Basically you are looking for the "just right" timing. Too short is bad & too long is bad.

What this report showed is that there was collaboration with municipalities to shorten the yellows below federal recommendations and issue more tickets.  The findings were pretty straight-forward, and nobody bothered to even attempt to defend the practice.

TAMPA BAY, Florida -- A subtle, but significant tweak to Florida's rules regarding traffic signals has allowed local cities and counties to shorten yellow light intervals, resulting in millions of dollars in additional red light camera fines.

WTSP Investigators discovered the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) quietly changed the state's policy on yellow intervals in 2011, reducing the minimum below federal recommendations. The rule change was followed by engineers, both from FDOT and local municipalities, collaborating to shorten the length of yellow lights at key intersections, specifically those with red light cameras (RLCs).

While yellow light times were reduced by mere fractions of a second, research indicates a half-second reduction in the interval can double the number of RLC citations -- and the revenue they create. The 10 News investigation stemmed from a December discovery of a dangerously short yellow light in Hernando County.

After the story aired, the county promised to re-time all of its intersections, and the 10 News Investigators promised to dig into yellow light timing all across Tampa Bay.

The problem is there is no change in state policy that allows yellows to be reduced below federal recommendation levels, despite what this article supposedly claims. Now it is possible some jurisdictions are setting yellows below the recommendation, but in no way is it an FDOT policy as you seem to be claiming. FDOT policy is unchanged in calculating yellow intervals. I looked up the policies & provided links. Read them if you don't believe me.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

May 17, 2013 9:44:52 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

Paul- if you are REALLY interested in this subject, i can start a thread on it.  i was going to challenge a ticket last year, and did about a month's worth of research on it.  i ended up not challenging it because, due to my particular circumstances, the stakes were too high.

I'm interested.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

May 17, 2013 13:18:57 GMT -5 Angel! said:

May 16, 2013 23:46:09 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

That's a lovely bunch of facts and figures there.  I see what you mean by no need to notify drivers of changes- however, when state law has a formula, and we get a camera, and all of the sudden the formula is scrapped, and the number of tickets issued goes up?  Well, let's just say that while I may have been born at night, it wasn't last night.

The formula wasn't scrapped. Didn't bother to look at my links did you? The formula was not changed one bit. It is still the same formula used nationwide as recommended by ITE & FHWA and has been in practice since 1985.

There's never been a case I've read about where shortening a yellow light would make an intersection safer.  In fact, most of what I've read indicates that the #1 way to improve safety is to allow for a short period of "all red" lights, and #2 is to lengthen the yellow lights.

Lengthen the yellow lights to the appropriate length if they are too short. Just making yellow lights longer everywhere simply changes driver expectancy & people push the yellow because they know it is longer. And yes, this does happen. Driver expectancy is very important in traffic engineering. Basically you are looking for the "just right" timing. Too short is bad & too long is bad.

What this report showed is that there was collaboration with municipalities to shorten the yellows below federal recommendations and issue more tickets.  The findings were pretty straight-forward, and nobody bothered to even attempt to defend the practice.

The problem is there is no change in state policy that allows yellows to be reduced below federal recommendation levels, despite what this article supposedly claims. Now it is possible some jurisdictions are setting yellows below the recommendation, but in no way is it an FDOT policy as you seem to be claiming. FDOT policy is unchanged in calculating yellow intervals. I looked up the policies & provided links. Read them if you don't believe me.

I didn't claim anything- the article doesn't "supposedly claim" anything.  The article makes a statement:  

WTSP Investigators discovered the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) quietly changed the state's policy on yellow intervals in 2011, reducing the minimum below federal recommendations. The rule change was followed by engineers, both from FDOT and local municipalities, collaborating to shorten the length of yellow lights at key intersections, specifically those with red light cameras (RLCs).

I will comb through your links- what I'll be looking for is anything that contradicts the statement that the FDOT changed the policy on yellow intervals in 2011.  To the best of my knowledge, FDOT has not denied this.

[zibazinski]

My. Aunt stood downtown Salem, Oregon and times the yellow lights with the cameras. Yes, shortened. She wrote a letter and it was taken care of. Makes you wonder how much city of Salem collected before it all came out?

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

May 22, 2013 18:06:20 GMT -5 zibazinski said:

My. Aunt stood downtown Salem, Oregon and times the yellow lights with the cameras. Yes, shortened. She wrote a letter and it was taken care of. Makes you wonder how much city of Salem collected before it all came out?

They installed a camera at an intersection down the road from the place in Delray, and the yellow light was noticeably shorter- you didn't have to time it.  The damn thing went from a normal yellow light to a yellow flash bulb.  Letters were sent, it came up at several hearings (I think it was in Boca?) and nothing was ever done about it.  There are more rear end collisions at that intersection than any place I've ever seen-- there's always an accident, sometimes an outright pile up.  They don't give a shit.  They just want the money.

[Deleted]

 That's Capitalism for ya.

[EVT1]

Jun 7, 2013 0:09:43 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

May 22, 2013 18:06:20 GMT -5 zibazinski said:

My. Aunt stood downtown Salem, Oregon and times the yellow lights with the cameras. Yes, shortened. She wrote a letter and it was taken care of. Makes you wonder how much city of Salem collected before it all came out?

They installed a camera at an intersection down the road from the place in Delray, and the yellow light was noticeably shorter- you didn't have to time it.  The damn thing went from a normal yellow light to a yellow flash bulb.  Letters were sent, it came up at several hearings (I think it was in Boca?) and nothing was ever done about it.  There are more rear end collisions at that intersection than any place I've ever seen-- there's always an accident, sometimes an outright pile up.  They don't give a shit.  They just want the money.

Scameras   Like that. Makes sense though- these corps had to pitch their idea- and if it wasn't a moneymaker.......

Heard another good one today- the Washington Compost  

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Jun 7, 2013 0:52:37 GMT -5 @patiencetried said:

 That's CRONY Capitalism for ya.

Fixed.  Well, no, actually- and quite literally- that's fascism.