Hacker News Reader

Comment by 9dev | Hacker News Reader

That seems only like a temporary problem until people get used to actually stopping at red lights, as they are supposed to. After the initial acceptance phase, it should minimise accidents over the longer term.

View on HN

Unless there is a warning of how long is left on the yellow light, it’s an unsolvable problem because there is an asymmetric risk of stopping vs accelerating

The lights should be designed so that if you don't have enough space to stop with a mild deceleration you should just go through. If a mild deceleration get you rear ended then of course that's an unsolvable problem

Then they shorten the yellow so that it isn't "with a mild deceleration" but a full-on stomp-on-the-brakes stop.

No one wants to risk a ticket with a guess at how long the yellow is going to be, or whether they’ll make it thru or not. That is the unsolvable part. Yellows are inconsistent , and you aren’t accounting for slow-moving traffic ahead of you that might cause you to block the intersection, etc.

There was actually a scandal in Chicago were a study found that the city systematically reduced the length of yellows only on lights that had red light cameras in order to harvest tickets.

I feel like the subtext of all these concerns is that you'd need to drive very carefully to reliably avoid camera tickets... and nobody wants to drive that carefully. I get it, I don't either, and I do get occasional camera tickets. But like: I should also be driving more carefully.

Slamming on the breaks because you’re anxious about a yellow light is not careful driving. But that’s what red light cameras do

> it’s an unsolvable problem because there is an asymmetric risk of stopping vs accelerating

This just sounds like everyone is speeding and/or distracted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com