Safe Speed Forums

I have noticed that on all traffic light junctions I have seen with cameras on them, the cameras are placed on the bigger road (or the one with the most traffic flow).

Surely it would be better to have the cameras on the smaller of the roads?

If you go through a red light from the smaller road you are driving into faster moving traffic and/or more of it. The opposite is true if you go through a red light on the main road. So surely it is more dangerous to go through a red light on the smaller road than on the larger one? So why are the cameras always on the larger roads?

Just a thought.

(Yeah this of course assumes that traffic light cameras are "a good idea" in the first place...)

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Andrew.

Higher levels of traffic = higher revenue potential? Or am I just being too cynical here...

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Chris

That's the only thing I could think of...

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Andrew.

Major road = faster speeds = more severe accidents, from the mind of someone who fails to realise that an accident resulting from running a red light will be due to a collision involving people in both directions.


Nah, I think Twister was right.

I can answer this puzzler with a "confidential" document from a red light camera company that explains exactly why they put cameras where they did. See here.

You'll find main criteria were: "high volume", "downhill" and "Amber (yellow) phase less than 4 seconds."

You're not cynical. You're right. The documents were taken from a court trial in San Diego, California in 2001. In case you're wondering, the cameras lost that trial where 300 people banded together to fight their tickets in one case.