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IF YOU SEE ONE OF THESE CAMERAS WHILE DRIVING THROUGH AN INTERSECTION...PUNCH IT!
IF YOU SEE ONE OF THESE CAMERAS WHILE DRIVING THROUGH AN INTERSECTION, PUNCH IT!

A recent article in The New York Times warned readers about speeding, saying police citations can increase your insurance payments by double digits.

The story included the following nonsense: “So you might want to slow down or even stop when the traffic light turns yellow, instead of accelerating and trying to get through before it turns red.”

Red light cameras encourage motorists to accelerate through yellow lights.

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Before the advent of red light cameras, I used to slow down when traffic lights turned yellow. If I were able to bring my full-sized pickup to a stop, I did. If I couldn’t, then I rolled through the tail end of the yellow light or maybe even the beginning of the red light.

I considered that the safe way to drive.

Now, when I see a yellow light, I punch my accelerator. Why? Because it’s impossible to force a pickup or any other heavy vehicle to slow down from 40 or 50 mph to a dead stop in just a few seconds, without having to stand on the brakes and come to a screeching halt.

Some cities, such as Dallas and Lubbock, have even relied on shorter yellow lights to make sure they catch more motorists and increase profits.

I’m not going to ruin my brakes by sliding to a three-second stop at every intersection just to please some money-grubbers who want to exploit its citizenry and pad our city coffers. So I punch the accelerator with everything I’ve got to get through an intersection before the camera snaps a picture.

THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN I SAIL THROUGH YELLOW LIGHTS NOW
THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN I SAIL THROUGH YELLOW LIGHTS NOW

Is this safe driving? Uh, no.  I liked my old way of driving better.

But myself and other drivers are doing this now in reaction to arbitrary cameras that allow no room for grace — just a $75 fine, no exceptions, no human being to listen, no nothing except a payment demand.

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14 COMMENTS

  1. 1. Maybe your vehicle is too big (unless you’re a rancher?).
    2. Doing 40 or 50 in an area with traffic lights (especially camera-equipped, which tend to be in more congested areas)?
    3. Haz got a ticket lately for red-light running?
    Awwww.

    To quote the Mexican bashers: what part of illegal don’t you understand?

  2. RLC are NOT a safety device. They are a revenue device. (Most RLC “tickets” are for techincal fouls like right turns on red, stopping over the stop line, and split second mistakes!)

    In fact some of the vendors have resorted to Fake post in local papers to give the illusion of “public support”.

    Read here on how ATS VP pretended to be a local in pro camera post! http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20110525/BLOG48/705259809

    http://www.motorists.org
    http://www.banthecams.org
    http://www.camerafraud.com
    http://www.bhspi.org

  3. I drive a standard Ford F-150. The truck weighs about 5,000 pounds. Try stopping 5,000 pounds of steel and rubber in three seconds. Not easy.

    I got a red light ticket in downtown Fort Worth earlier this year because I tried to slow down at a yellow light but couldn’t stop in time so I just rolled on through. I haven’t got a ticket since then because I now floor it whenever I see a yellow light. It’s not safe but it beats another $75 extortion fee from the city.

  4. The first photo is a traffic camera and not a red-light camera. Red light cameras require a sensor and flash unit. Red light cameras (camera, sensor, and flash) are getting smaller, but not as small as the traffic camera you posted.

  7. Are there any live feeds from the red light cameras in the red light district?
    BTW I would post more but sometimes the numbers are too high for me to add.

  8. I wonder if Texas knows who it is in bed with.

    ATS, the company running the cameras in many Texas towns, has just been exposed as being behind a lot of the pro-camera comments posted online. The expose caused the suspension, three weeks ago, of an ATS VP, who was posing as a resident of the various towns where he posted his comments. Source: Go to the website of the Everett (WA) Daily Herald (heraldnet dot com) and put Kroske into the search box.

    But don’t stop there. VP Kroske was just one of ATS’ spokesmen. There’s at least one other, and he is potentially much more dangerous. He is Mark Rosenker, former chair of the NTSB. Having retired from the NTSB he now is Senior Advisor to an ATS-supported pro-camera group, the National Coalition for Safer Roads (NCSR). Because of his NTSB credential, Rosenker has been granted numerous pro-camera “guest columns” in newspapers around the country in which he mentioned his current position with the NCSR but never disclosed that the NCSR is supported by ATS. A little more history about Rosenker. Early in his career he did electronic monitoring for CRP, the campaign to re-elect Pres. Nixon. CRP (now known colloquially as CReeP), did the Watergate break-in, after which many of the conspirators were sent to prison, and Nixon resigned.

    ATS is also behind many of the “citizen supported” pro-camera websites you’ll find in towns where the company is entrenched. The best article about the concocted sites is at bancams dot com. To find the article, put “stupid” in their search box.

    Someone might ask, “So who is behind ATS?” Here, we have to follow the money. In Sept. 2008 Warren Buffett, owner of Geico, invested $5 billion in Goldman-Sachs which, later that month, invested $50 million in ATS. There’s no direct audit trail connecting Buffett/Geico to ATS, but we have to consider that Goldman was in dire straits back then, and wouldn’t have been able to make the investment had it not received the $5 billion from Buffett.

    Anyone feeling like throwing out the sheets?

  9. Sounds like a lot of commenters here are busted red-light runners.
    The research clearly shows that cameras have reduced serious, often fatal, collisions at the intersections where they are used. And they are always put at the intersections with the worst records of accidents.
    My God, they publicly proclaim the intersections with the cameras, they even post signs at least a half-block before the intersections saying that they are camera enforced, and you really, honestly have to run the damn red light (not the yellow one) to get a ticket.
    Here’s a thought: Quit whining, obey the law, and drive your penis substitutes carefully and safely.

  10. No one can stop their vehicle within the time the light remains yellow. Every DOT in the world uses ITE’s Formula to set the duration of the yellow. The result is a yellow that is half the time required to stop.

    As for a 3 second yellow, that result is for vehicles traveling at 20 mph.

    The predisposition to beat the light also results from that Formula. Since you can never stop within the time the light is yellow, and when you don’t know if there’s enough distance to stop, and since the DOT fails to disclose the safe braking distance in violation of their own spec, the logical guess is to beat the light. This problem is called the dilemma zone. A well known engineering failure which is what all the red light camera companies exploit.

  11. Oh good grief, most of the whiners here, with their conspiracy theories and horror stories are the reason the cameras were installed in the first place.
    Yeah, I know the feeling of a Ford F 150 barreling down, omnipotent and 16 inches from my rear bumper. And driving 3 mph UNDER the posted limit is just not in their DNA.
    Cameras for the revenue? Sounds good to me. Jeeze, as long as there is tetosterone and pickup trucks there’ll never be an end to this revenue stream.

  12. I have no use for people who support government spying on citizens. We have gone from a presumption of innocence to a presumption that everyone is in need of constant punishment. Better wake up to what’s going on here.

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