In my experience, I don't see that longer yellow lights really help much - people just keep going through until the light turns red. At least in this state, as long as you have already entered an intersection before the light turns red, you haven't run the red light.
I would think that a better strategy would be to increase the delay before turning the next light green, after the last one turned red.
> In my experience, I don't see that longer yellow lights really help much
Studies done in Virginia and Texas contradict that assertion. Increasing the yellow phase time decreased the incidence of red light running and the effect was sustained over time.
I'm interested to read a citation that shows that increasing yellow light length is superior to RLCs. Please send it my way. Thank you.
Re:Is Every Speed Limit Too Low?
by AnthonyMouse on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @12:38AM
(#14200465)
Compare the percentages for right-angle crashes on page 63 of your link to the numbers here:
http://saferstreetsla.org/wp-content/uploads/reports/A%20Com...
Assuming the number of right-angle crashes is proportional to the number of people who run red lights, the reduction due to having a longer yellow light is larger than the reduction due to the RLC. And that's before considering the rear-end collisions, which a red light camera increases but a longer yellow light reduces.
This is interesting, but it seems to mostly be focused on violations rather than crashes. I can see how the two might be related. But I also somewhat suspect that early into red violations may not be the type of red light running that causes accidents the most.
The problem, of course, is that there is a better way to reduce side impact collisions -- and red light running in general -- which is to increase the length of the yellow light.
But because doing that actually does reduce the number of people who run a red light, the intersections with red light cameras do the opposite of that, because they need people to run red lights in order to generate revenue and pay for the cameras. And if you compare the results at red light camera intersections with short yellow lights against normal intersections with appropriately timed yellow lights, the cameras are killing people.