Red-Light Cameras Increase Accidents, USF Study Says (March 2010)

[Ian Perry]

Cameras at intersections increase, not decrease, accidents, according to a University of South Florida study.  The university's yearlong review, published in the campus journal Florida Public Health Review, warns that drivers are at higher risk of having accidents at intersections where cameras are installed.

People see a yellow light and normally they would drive through it, but at camera intersections they do the quick stop. They slam on the brakes and that means everybody else behind them slams on the brakes," said Barbara Langland-Orban, one of three co-authors of the study and an associate professor in USF's Department of Health Policy and Management.

USF examined five red-light camera studies. It concluded that two were flawed and found that the other three drew the same basic conclusion about cameras at intersections.

"Overall, they have been found to increase crashes and injuries," Langland-Orban said.

She pointed to a seven-year study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council that showed crashes at intersections with the cameras increased 29 percent.

Another study, by the Urban Transit Institute at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State university, looked at almost five years' worth of data. The study concluded that accident rates increased 40 percent at intersections with cameras; injury crashes rose between 40 percent and 50 percent.

The USF review contradicts other studies showing a decline in wrecks, including a report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that is frequently cited by camera advocates.

The USF study shows that despite what backers of the cameras say, red-light running is not a growing problem in Florida.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/mar/12/na-red-light-cameras-increa... 

See also:

D.C. Red-Light Cameras Fail to Reduce Accidents (2005)

The analysis shows that the number of crashes at locations with cameras more than doubled, from 365 collisions in 1998 to 755 in 2004. Injury and fatal crashes climbed 81 percent, from 144 such wrecks to 262. Broadside crashes, also known as right-angle or T-bone collisions, rose 30 percent, from 81 to 106 during that time frame. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/03/AR2...

 

The LAPD has released its own analysis of the cameras, with a differing view:

 

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&am...

mso-outline-level:2"">"Times New Roman";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB;mso-bidi-font-weight: bold">From these studies, can we say that red-light cameras make intersections with
traffic lights more dangerous?

[Ian Perry]

One more file attached here.

[Martin Cassini]

Ian, I've only just seen this discussion thread of yours! I only seem to get alerts for blog posts or comments. Yes, I've been keeping a bit of an eye on the red-light camera debate in the US. What I've read supports my instinctive view that they are another negative intrusion. Red lights, bad enough, are only "needed" because priority creates unbroken streams of priority traffic. Red-light cameras are devised to cure but doomed to exacerbate problems contrived by the "experts".