Comment 101509

By jonathan (registered) | Posted May 21, 2014 at 23:29:41

I've received one of those tickets at Main and Dundurn. To be fair, there's a lot going on at that intersection, with traffic from the highway trying to head south on Dundurn, while traffic from Main is trying to head north. Changing lanes involves a whole lot of blind-spot checking. Prayer helps, too. I've little doubt I was avoiding an accident at the moment I blew through the light 0.2 seconds after it had gone red. In the rain, I might add. Really, that intersection needs a far better solution than red-light cameras. It's by far the worst part of my daily commute.

It does bear mentioning that the stats are likely far, far worse than the reality. As noted, my ticket was for entering the intersection 0.2 seconds after it had gone red. This would be long before anything else had gone green (in fact, it's very likely I would have cleared the intersection before that change). And as others have mentioned, the cameras do not take into account things like weather and road conditions, and the lights do not take into account intersection size. With a system weighted against the driver, it's not really surprising how high the red-light ticket count has risen.

Far more interesting to me would be to see a plot of the exact amount of time by which the guilty driver blew the red.

I will say this, though. After paying a $325 fine, I make damn sure I'm going to clear the intersection before it goes red. The countdown clocks go a long way in helping that, and IMHO are a huge benefit to drivers in judging whether they'll make it through.

Until that OTHER time, when I accelerated to clear a light with a countdown clock, only to wind up with a (minor) speeding ticket. Doh.

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