>When Järlström brought the issue to the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying, the state board opened an investigation in 2015 and fined him $500 the following year for practicing engineering without a professional license.
What a bunch of pricks. Vogons couldn't have done any worse than the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying.
While on this issue I mostly agree with the defendant, I think it's reasonable to protect certain titles (engineer, doctor, lawyer, dentist). For a parallel situation, imagine a hypothetical person named Phil, who has a doctorate in psychology. They call themselves "doctor" and give medical advise to the unwitting public, despite having no relevant training.
In this case, the guy had training as an electric engineer, but was commenting outside of his proven realm of expertise. However, he wasn't deceiving the public by representing himself as an engineer-for-hire, though, which I think makes it forgivable. I just found the free speech ruling to be over-broad.
The courts very much got it right in this case. Joe Shmoe has health problems and will listen to a "doctor" but they don't have a bridge half-built in their backyard or an automotive manufacturing setup. There's just no risk to letting people say they are engineers, and the first amendment should only be infringed upon for good reason.
Let's take this case as an example. Anyone can send a letter saying "The traffic light is too short; here's the math to prove it". Saying "I'm an engineer" might help you get that letter noticed, but it would almost certainly be illegal to reprogram the light without a professional engineer's sign-off independent of that letter no matter the person's qualifications. The state was never at risk of acting on his advice no matter how he represented himself. So why not let him say it?
No pretending to be an engineer can have deadly consequences. Imagine someone saying they're an engineer and being contracted to build a bridge or building. That could (and has) have disastrous consequences.
You can be an engineer without an engineering license. Safety-critical jobs usually require a professional engineering license, but there are a lot of engineering work which is not safety-critical.
When it comes to civil stuff (i.e. the safety critical thing people think of when they hear engineer - bridges, buildings, highways, flood protection...) you absolutely can't call yourself an engineer without professional accreditation in every jurisdiction I know.
Even then (buildings for example), I believe some of the work can be done by non-licensed engineers. Stuff like land surveying, some electrical, CAD/modelling work, design of plumbing, heating, etc. can be done without license. I know a few people that aren't licensed but work on condos as engineers. I'm guessing a lot of the stuff has to be reviewed/approved by a licensed engineer, but that could be 1 to 5 licensed:unlicensed for example.
An engineering graduate, or an engineer-in-training. You can call yourself an engineer once you have several years of experience, pass some exams on law and ethics and whatnot, and get a professional designation.
That is downright ridiculous, sorry. You are an engineer, just not a "certified" or "accredited" one for some sub-set of tasks/things/requirements. The fact that we have to even discuss this as if saying you're an engineer is some ultra-taboo because people might "mistakenly" allow you to do mission critical or potentially dangerous work without asking for your specific accreditation is disturbing and Orwellian-like policing of plain language.
The work experience requirement is pretty important, though. That's how you learn the practical side of the field.
I have a degree in EE, but there's a 0% chance I could safely design electrical equipment. In school they taught me how to analyze circuits, but I know nothing of the electrical code, let alone practical matters like mechanical stresses on wires. Without somebody to learn from, I would learn a lot of things the hard way—when the design fails.
You learn those things the same whether you will get an engineering license in the future or not. The engineer exams don't actually test this kind of knowledge.
You have to have 4 years of accredited experience working under an already-certified professional engineer. This experience get audited, and references get called to confirm the types of experience and whether it is adequate. The auditor is free to say "this two month period and that six month period were not adequate experience. You have to get 8 more months experience before you can qualify." It's not the exam alone, but rather the combination of multiple factors: required education, required experience, examinations, and ongoing professional training (required to do several dozen hours per year of certified professional training to stay current).
In my jurisdiction there are no technical exams for applicants with a degree from an accredited program. I regard the exams as much less important than work experience under the supervision of someone who knows what they're doing.
I am a licensed professional engineer with a B.Sc. in EE, so I've gone through every part of the process for designing electrical equipment except for acquiring work experience in that subfield. The only thing preventing me from signing off on an electrical drawing is that I do not believe I am qualified.
There's only one state in Australia that has mandatory registration of engineers. There are several more states that are currently starting up mandatory registration schemes, and of course the national professional bodies operate voluntary registration and accreditation schemes.
Now of course that doesn't mean that you can just start building bridges as a non-accredited engineer, I expect the courts would look unkindly on you in a negligence lawsuit if your company had engineers that couldn't demonstrate their professional qualifications and development.
This is seen as a problem and the professional bodies are pushing more states to adopt mandatory registration, so we'll see more of that in the next few years, but it's not like Australia is a land where bridges fall down weekly without mandatory registration.
I could at least pretend that might happen if there was only one kind of engineer. But someone that incompetent at hiring might also hire the wrong kind of engineer. The rule doesn't do anything to help.
A P.Eng. is professionally obligated to refuse work that they're not competent to perform. You can't hire the wrong kind of engineer, because the engineer knows if they're the right kind or not.
Just to expand, I've never heard of an engineer from the wrong field signing off on a document (e.g. an EE signing off on a structure), but here's a lesser example of unskilled practice and the corresponding disciplinary action: https://www.apega.ca/assets/PDFs/discipline-decisions/18-011...
Many times software engineers fall under the 'industrial exemption' for most states' professional practices acts. That's how many folks without a PE are able to be engineers - as long as they're not selling engineering services to the general public, but only to their employer.
Things get trickier with software as well - with many engineering disciplines, the public can be placed in harm's way by the malpractice of engineering - that's why many civil firms require PE's. In other areas, it's less desirable - for defense contractors, many purposely avoid PE's due to our ethical obligations around harming the public.
Surrounding software, I think a major part of it is just that the laws haven't caught up with the times. NCEES now has a Software PE available but no clue about the contents of the exam. It seems like a tricky one to test for.
The last time I saw the areas covered by a PE exam for Software Engineering was maybe 25 years ago, in California. Over half the exam was electrical engineering. Less than a third was actually about anything related to software.
Near as I could tell, it was a rent-seeking and exclusionary agenda of some entrenched parties. The proposed exam requirement for software engineers didn't go anywhere.
This is why I will never call myself a software engineer, despite having a master's degree with a specialization in "software engineering." It's kind of an insult to actual engineers. Software Developer works just fine.
At least in Belgium, software engineering at university is as much an engineering degree as is civil engineer, electrical engineer etc. You have largely the same maths, physics, ... and you get the same protected title (ir.). In fact I know some civil engineers who claim other engineering studies are harder.
But I do agree that developing software is usually more of an art than a science and a lot of software engineers just make business apps where not much of the engineering background is required.
Why would it be an insult? I agree that if you went to a boot camp for 3 months and then began calling yourself a software engineer, it's a bit misleading. But what's the cut off line?
My CS program was in my school's college of engineering, which had a much more rigorous application process than the lib arts school. The first two years were essentially the same for CS, CE, MechE, ChemE, etc - lots of math and physics.
Maybe I'm just a bit sore. While society doesn't stereotype us as badly as before - the typical low status nerd - most of that improvement is due to SV engineers making such good money. But it still feels like we're not respected the same as other higher paying careers like law, medicine, or even other types of engineers. I mean I've actually had managers who probably make less than me assign me remedial tasks like fixing their laptop or resetting their password.
Feel exactly the same. We just don't need so many engineers in the industry but we need busloads of software developers that learn Git and the latest design pattern.
It's a shame, because it's only one of them that I feel will stand the test of time.
Just FYI many people with doctorates (not MDs) do call themselves doctors. I've known many Finance, Philosophy and Econ doctors in my time and they all use that title and their name plaques all had "Dr. So-and-so" on them. I'm sure it is common in other areas as well.
I don't know how it works in America, but in Europe (or at least in the European countries I know) that's actually the formal standard. If you have a PhD, you earn the right to be called Dr. (name). If you get a degree in medicine, you are colloquially addressed as "doctor" but formally you aren't one, unless you get the PhD in medicine.
When we graduated from law school a friend of mine called our state bar association and asked about the ethical rules regarding an attorney calling themselves "doctor" since we have JDs. The answer for our state is that it's fine unless you practice in the area of medical malpractice, in which case it might cause confusion with clients and will be considered on a case-by-case basis if there is a complaint.
I know a few with PhDs, and they don't. Usually post-nominal credentials, rather than "doctor" before the name. Anecdotal evidence doesn't mean a whole lot.
The giving-medical-advice thing was a dig at a formerly popular television host.
There is a difference between PhDs typically not introducing themselves as "Doctor" and saying that it is a falsehood when they do.
That said, a doctor misrepresenting themself as a physician and giving medical advice where not licensed to do practice medicine, as done by Dr. Phil, is wildly unethical.
Definitely, and if you read my original comment, I defended the engineer because he wasn't using the title as a deception or in soliciting business. Though he was potentially commenting outside his realm of expertise.
"Lawyer" doesn't tend to be a protected title (with some exceptions). Mostly it is used as a colloquial term for the protected professions e.g. attorney, solicitor, advocate etc.
Yes, we have accreditation and professional societies. And yet, our doctors and dentists are not "notoriously expensive". I'm saying the one does not necessarily cause the other.
However, thanks to the Vogons of Oregon, we might now get longer yellows, fewer red light accidents and fatalities, fewer automatic red light running tickets, and great material for appealing those bogus tickets.
No, hats off to the a-holes on the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying. They need to be humiliated even more thoroughly than this. This needs to be national and international front-page news. Let these petty tyrants know that heroes exist.
This story keeps popping up with updates. What a great saga.
And, of course, Mr. Järlström deserves all the kudos, free beer, pizza -- a few $$ that might help defray costs? Where to send?
I disagree that longer yellows will mean less accidents. I've always held a fascination with behavioural psychology and I spend a great deal of time observing people's behaviour and it's my hypothesis, which I feel will bear out in time, that people will get used to longer yellows and begin to think... "I've got plenty of time to get through that without stopping" so they'll just keep going and people will still run reds and still cause accidents...
They'd do better to change it for a countdown just like they do with the crosswalk sign that counts down from 15 seconds or something before going to a solid amber for a couple of seconds before going red. They'd also do well to have some kind of markers on the road indicating a safe distance from the traffic lights to come to a stop in an average family car (whatever that means) in current weather conditions.
Longer offsets between red and the intersecting green work better preventing accidents. In the case of the “engineer” i don’t know exactly the details of the Oregon red light law but in most states i know it counts the moment you cross the stopping line, if the light changes while you’re crossing or turning you still good. The intersecting traffic should not start until it’s safe to do so.
After reading this, I'm certainly inclined to adjust my hypothesis, but not completely. It reduced accidents by 50%. That's awesome.
However, behaviour adjusts as we become complacent, and it's in our nature to become complacent with that which we are acclimated to every day. We definitely need some consideration for that factor and we definitely need a design that goes further to ensuring that people aren't tempted to run the lights. The temptation to run them "just this once" because "I'm late" or "I've already sat 3 changes in this line up and I'm pissed off with waiting" or "I'm sure I can beat the red" needs to be removed.
You're not wrong, I don't think. But to the extent that red light cameras have led to a vicious shortening of yellows, with consequent increases in collisions, this may put an end to that. And that I celebrate.
I am in favor of replacing the automatic red light ticket fine with a Pizza-for-the-Not-Engineer-Guy payment. Would be interested in the dude's paypal or other info too.
Predictable. This is exactly what people are trying to ensure happens when they say "Software Engineers should get certifications". They want to have this power to squelch reasonable people.
1. Being a P.Eng carries with it weight. When you are one, you can make arguments from authority on the subject of engineering.
2. He claimed to be a P.Eng, without being one.
This undermines the profession, at loss to the public. I can go around, giving unsolicited medical advice all I want. I can't go around, giving unsolicited medical advice, while claiming to be a MD - and for good reason.
He claimed to be an engineer. The ruling preserved license requirements to claim yourself a "professional engineer" and "registered professional engineer" [0].
From what I am reading in the articles linked above, he does not seem to have identified himself as "professional engineer." Rather, Oregon's state law is unusual in restricting the use of the term 'engineer' itself to licensed "professional engineers" (as they are referred to elsewhere).
Perhaps a person who is trained as an electrical engineer and who has a history of employment as a researcher and developer of audio electronics (in Oregon) should not think of or refer to themselves as an 'engineer' unless they are licensed in the jurisdiction they happen to be in, but this is a problem with a simple fix, and it is a problem unique to Oregon.
> This undermines the profession, at loss to the public
It does? I've seen really good engineering done by people who don't even have degrees in engineering (or degrees at all, for that matter). Contrariwise, utter disasters by people who were supposed to be incredibly professional.
For the most part, being a PE is about liability, and the technical stuff is there for show. It has nothing to do with "undermining the profession", it's all about who can sue whom when something falls over.
Where I live you're safe from the red light camera if your front-two tires are over the white line when the light changes to red. Sounds like in Oregon you're only safe if you're out of the intersection when it turns red, which seems entirely absurd, especially for tourists / newcomers to the area. How am I supposed to know how quickly your yellow light changes on this street?
You are supposed to be an income source for American Traffic Solutions, Redflex Traffic Systems, and the city in question. It isn't about safety anymore. It is about money.
And if a city needs more money for infrastructure/schools/parks/whatever the citizens value, then that is what taxes are for. At least with taxes you aren't fleeced by private corporation along with way.
Sure. Let's consider a company that claims to reinvest in itself and ends up with a lower tax liability as a result. Every big company does this, but I'll admit that I like to pick on Amazon and Wal-Mart.
I think being able to reinvest profits into your own company is a great thing to be able to do. But I don't believe it's ethical to pay people little in order to reinvest in your own company and certainly not without the input of the workers affected. When Amazon's own workers are unable to do the very same thing -- reinvesting their own profits into themselves -- then Amazon's workers are certainly fleeced by a private corporation along the way.
Low wages are just the starting point here; any member of a community which is receiving less than a living wage also needs support from the community. Sometimes that support comes from friends and family or churches. Often it comes directly from your tax money.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing to send my tax money to help people though. I'm absolutely saying that I shouldn't have to. Large corporations reap millions and billions from their own employees. Why, exactly, is it fair that they should profit at the expense of the actual real humans doing their work?
Thank you for taking the time to reply. I appreciate it.
I think I understand what you are saying, but let me make sure. Are you saying you think corporate tax should be funding people in need and not personal tax (whether it property, sales, income, etc.)? To be honest, in my original comment I didn't really think about where the tax should come from, but I think I do agree with you. I do think something like a universal income could allow corporations more freedom as they'd be freed from the burden of feeding, clothing, housing, and healing an entire nation.
Why should the tax source be distinct? In my state of Texas, for example, there is no personal income; there is sales tax but that's more for corporate accounting than personal accounting. That leaves corporate taxes (and unreliably, fines) to pay for the state's budget. So then companies which engage in practices to minimize their tax risk avoid paying even that.
While I think a universal income is a laudable goal, I do not think our economy is automated enough to support it.
You don't think corporations should share the burden of feeding, clothing, housing, and healing the nation in which it reaps its profits?
> In my state of Texas, for example, there is no personal income
I see. I live in an heavy income tax state, so I think that is why my mind went there initially.
> You don't think corporations should share the burden of feeding, clothing, housing, and healing the nation in which it reaps its profits?
Oh I do, I just don't want those things connected to employment. I am not comfortable with the current coupling of health care and employment, but corporations paying adequate taxes to fund these services offered to all I'm all for.
Thanks for the reasonable conversation, by the way. This thread has helped me learned more and think about different viewpoints on this topic.
The implicit premise of such arguments is that every WalMart (etc.) worker receiving benefits; would be employed at a party disqualifying them from public benefits if not for their present employer.
This is quite implausible, of course, which is why it's never explicitly argued, but the entire criticism falls apart without that assumption.
I've always found it to be an odd displacement of responsibility. If somebody doesn't have the resources they need to live, it's our collective ethical responsibility to provide a resource floor. Walmart et al don't magically gain ethical responsibility for providing this floor just because they purchase someone's labor, in the same way that buying a dresser from someone off of Craigslist doesn't make you responsible for making the seller has enough income overall. It's difficult for me to see this view as anything but a desperate ploy to abdicate direct responsibility for taking care of the neediest and foist it off on some perceived other
I think it's more of a remnant of a primary-employer-as-patron model of thinking that still permeates much of modern society as something of an echo of feudal social relations than a “desperare ploy” to do anything, but otherwise I agree with your characterization of it as a displacement of social responsibility onto a private actor that is both poorly positioned to carry it out (in that any greater effort of them to do so to their employees would probably reduce the number of employees and increase the total unmet social burden) and lacking incentive to do so.
> I think it's more of a remnant of a primary-employer-as-patron model of thinking that still permeates much of modern society as something of an echo of feudal social relations
As always, I'm never sure which side of Hanlon's Razor to fall on, since the level of stupidity and the level of malice required for either explanation are off the charts
Most employers of relatively unskilled labor pay poverty wages because they can get the labor they are seeking at that price, and they haven't identified ways to get sufficiently better returns paying more to justify higher pay.
> and what can one of the biggest (or biggest) private employers in America do about it?
Why should they?
I'd rather just tax capital earnings as income, tax high-end income more, and fund a UBI than expect employers to act irrationally as public benefit agencies.
It's just a potshot at amazon and walmart. Their misdeeds are totally tangential to whether or not a city does the upstanding thing (raises taxes with approval or tightens its belt if it can't get approval) or the unethical thing (extracting more money from residents and people who pass through in the form of fees for services and fines for petty violations of civil law).
The most damning evidence for your perspective is how the cameras are basically hidden, painted black, made inconspicuous.
If red light cameras were about safety, the addition of warning signs "Red Light Camera Intersection" ahead of the lights would drastically reduce the amount of dangerous behavior.
That isn't how the incentives work, though. Instead they hide them, throwing away the powerful deterrent they've created, in an attempt to make money from the unwary.
Playing devils advocate here: I think the reasoning behind it could be argued that if people dont know which intersections have red light cameras, they are more likely to not run reds at any intersection just in case. Similar to the idea behind [Panopticon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon). If the cameras were clearly labeled people might run reds in unlabeled intersections.
To clarify, the one the guy in the article is complaining about is not hidden, has been there for something like 15 years, and has plenty of signage warning about it.
It was also an intersection that had tons of accidents from people running the light before the camera was installed.
Also increasing yellow light duration is significantly cheaper than contracting out a network of cameras to a vendor who takes over half the revenue from each ticket.
> increasing yellow light duration is significantly cheaper than contracting out a network of cameras to a vendor who takes over half the revenue from each ticket.
It's cheaper for society, yes. It's much more expensive if you're the government notionally "paying" for that contract. It's paid out of revenues you didn't have before.
Ever time I've ever heard of these being implemented, the company selling them provides the cameras and installation at no cost. That's how they justify collecting a cut. It's free money for the city.
As a potential counterargument, if you fear Red Light Cameras but don't know where they are, you'll drive more safely at all intersections, not just the ones where they're actually installed.
That requires evidence that people drive more safely in their ticket-avoidance driving, vs accelerating through greens to beat the yellow, or slamming brakes on yellow to cause rear-end collisions.
This doesn’t seem to be the case. People drive more recklessly trying to avoid triggering a ticket. Cities know this and don’t care as long as they increase revenue. Bad people often run big cities.
Yes this is bizarre - it's the same in the UK, where crossing the stop line on red is the offence. Often in cities traffic will continue through the amber light so you often have to turn on red to clear the junction. (Pedestrian lights are generally timed to account for this.)
What if an obstruction appears in the road - a pedestrian or a u-turning car? Are you just meant to plow into them?
> What if an obstruction appears in the road - a pedestrian or a u-turning car? Are you just meant to plow into them?
I'm guessing you're supposed to get the robot-generated penalty, get your court date, take the day off of work, and plead your blindingly-obvious case to the court.
..... /or/ they could change to make the offense fire if you enter the intersection illegally instead of exit "illegally". :-\
A friend of mine got one of these and if you read carefully they aren't really even "tickets" though they try hard to obscure that. AFAICT the only real recourse the company that issues these "violations" has if you don't pay is to pursue them through ordinary collections, which I suspect would be difficult if you were to dispute the "debt."
In Germany there is a 1 second grace period after the light switches to red. And apparently, even if your tires crossed the stop line after the 1st second, you will not get a ticket if the photo series shows you did not move across the intersection.
Urban rumors are that some taxi drivers used this to empty the (physical) film rolls on the cameras by slowly rolling forward and back across the line past the 1 second rule. I guess this does not work so well with digital storage.
> And apparently, even if your tires crossed the stop line after the 1st second, you will not get a ticket if the photo series shows you did not move across the intersection.
Indeed. For many years, there was a nasty traffic light in the Stuttgart city center (at the Main Station) which was guarded by a traffic camera. It was positioned inside a very sharp turn, and it was very difficult to notice that the light was changing to red if you were already on a position of the road which was too close to the intersection to see the large overhead traffic lights, but too far away to see the small traffic light at the side of the road. I remember my father sometimes only coming to a stop a meter past the traffic light, which always triggered the camera. It never resulted in a ticket, though, as he was standing and not moving.
The reason is also that when the camera captures such an event an actual person gets to look at it and take the final decision, instead of just acting like a robot and dispatching the fine. They will use common sense to decide whether it was a punishable offense.
This is also the reason why it's never a good idea to flip off the camera. A court decided that looking at pictures of people showing the finger would have an emotional impact on the person analyzing them later so the fine in this case is much greater.
I live in Beaverton, OR. I'm not a fan of red light cameras but it's not that easy to get a red light ticket. We only have 4 intersections that have red light cameras[0], and they were put in because of the egregious abuse of the intersections. To get a red light ticket you would've had to either ignore or respond to a yellow light way later than anyone would agree is acceptable. There are intersections here where 3 or 4 cars will continue to turn on a red signal - it's insane.
Mr. Jarlstrom's wife may have been an outlier for the hardware and software that calculates the tickets. But, overall, the system is catching folks who are breaking the law.
I bet adding less than 1 extra second to the length of the yellow light will reduce accidents in those intersections too. What he's doing to fix the problem seems fair.
Reducing the accidents (injuries and damages) is better than catching more people.
> There are intersections here where 3 or 4 cars will continue to turn on a red signal - it's insane.
Sounds like targeted enforcement at those intersections is called for.
I spend a lot of time in Beaverton and have had quite a few close calls as a pedestrian. There’s something about the way they teach driving in Washington County...
(Ignore this: clearly my memory is flawed. Indiana doesn’t actually say anything about yellow lights, either about the requirement to be out before it turns red or stopping safely if possible.)
Here in Indiana you’re supposed to stop on yellow if you can safely.
That’s hard to judge for law enforcement but an easy rule for drivers to follow, if they would in fact do so. Doesn’t matter then how long the yellow light is.
A yellow light only indicates that the light is changing to red, and that the right of way is ending (as marked by a red light). There is nothing that states what a driver must/supposed-to do when facing a yellow light.
Assuming a driver is obeying all other traffic laws, a driver is lawfully allowed to enter an intersection on a yellow light, regardless of whether they have the time to stop or not.
In most (all?) US jurisdictions, drivers are taught that if the light is yellow, you should stop if you can do so safely.
In many US jurisdictions, including Oregon, you MUST stop for a yellow light if you can do so safely. Cops can and will ticket you for entering a yellow light when they deem that you could have safely stopped. I first learned this when one of my friends ticketed for this in Portland.
Since it difficult to remember which in which jurisdictions this applies, I always make sure to stop for yellow if I can do so safely.
Huh. I remember researching it a couple of years ago, but clearly my memory is not to be trusted, or there’s another part of the code that supplements that (but I’m skeptical there is).
Indiana has some silly law about signaling 200ft before a turn on rural roads rather than the normal 100ft. The local cops around IN highway 55 camp out, dinging people for this because the state highway signs are hard to distinguish from a 55MPH speed limit sign at that distance. Never mind if there's nobody else there to see you make your ridiculously unsafe turn.
50 mph is 264000 feet per hour.
This converts to 73.3 feet per second.
300' means you need to signal about four seconds before turning or changing lanes.
Before turning, the time would be more like 8 seconds due to the need to slow down. It’s too long to be reasonable. And too much pressure to strictly adhere to the law would create perverse incentives to temporarily drop below 50MPH before signaling and to keep the signal constantly on in case one wants to pass a car. It’s better to have a reasonable law that’s easy to follow to foster a culture of high compliance rates.
Maybe the point is to be signaling before you start slowing down? It doesn't sound unreasonable to me at all.
When I turn off of rural highways with 50+ mph speed limits, I signal about the same time I let off the gas to start slowing for the turn. Braking is at least a few seconds later, turning is well after that.
It does sound reasonable if most people know where their turn is, start planning for their turn far in advance and take some time to coast before starting to brake. That’s probably what the group who wrote the law was thinking. It is not how people actually drive and it’s too far in excess of what following traffic needs to exercise caution or slow down.
One of the challenges of traffic planning is that people will do what feels comfortable and is working; it’s not really worth writing laws to force them out of that unless there’s an oil crisis or a municipal revenue crisis.
I have three primary objections, but otherwise you’re right, it’s not unreasonable.
First, signage is generally awful in Indiana. I often don’t know that I’m turning 300’ in advance.
Second, I’d prefer a rule that’s simpler to follow but still (I think) achieves the same effect for those sharing the road: start signaling at least one second before you decelerate.
Third, treating this as a money-making operation for the police is perverse.
> In rural areas, the Junction assembly should be installed at least 400 feet in advance of the intersection.
In rural areas, the minimum distance between a Junction assembly and either a Destination sign or an Advance
Route Turn assembly should be 200 feet.
INDOT conveniently doesn't comply with this paragraph. You often only get a sign at the intersection itself with no advance. You're left guessing where the intersection actually is and when to slow down and signal.
You're in good company with the flawed memory. I went to Purdue out-of-state and a native Hoosier told me that you had to clear the intersection before it was red. Everyone else in the vehicle backed him up on it too.
This not being the rule where I was from (Virginia), I stopped by the DMV and picked up the handbook to see what else might be different, only to find that the rule was essentially the same as in Virginia (must enter intersection before it turns red).
It’s funny the kinds of falsehoods that people collectively believe. In CA, I can think of two widespread false beliefs about traffic law from when I was younger (no idea if they are still widespread). One is that it is illegal to drive barefoot. Another is that it is illegal to change lanes in an intersection. That latter one I actually got pulled over for but when the officer went to write the ticket I guess they couldn’t find the vehicle code section for it (because it didn’t exist).
It's not always possible to stop safely for a yellow light, especially if one is close to the intersection. Yellow lights should last long enough for a typical vehicle traveling at the speed limit and within some distance of the intersection to proceed into the intersection and make a complete (legal) turn.
That's exactly the idea behind the revised formula. (Which is an evolution of an earlier, similar formula that only considered the time to proceed straight through.)
When you drive in a new state, it’s good to look up whether the state is “permissive yellow” (e.g. California and Washington) vs “restrictive yellow” (e.g. Oregon) as well as whether it allows “right turn on red”.
A "restrictive yellow" light would be paired nicely with a speed trap, to increase revenue, since people will be monetarily motivated to "floor it" to avoid fees.
> How am I supposed to know how quickly your yellow light changes on this street?
Does it matter? If you're a tourist/newcomer, simply don't try to make it through a yellow light just because you can. If you can stop, do so.
In Oregon, it's not absurd to be safe only when out of the intersection. As a "restrictive yellow" state, the yellow cycle time includes the time to completely clear the intersection. IOW, the yellow cycle time is longer than it would be otherwise.
Yes, without understanding that the yellow times are longer, it would seem absurd.
Does it matter? If you're a tourist/newcomer, simply don't try to make it through a yellow light just because you can. If you can stop, do so.
That may get you rear-ended or barely so, because the driver behind may be accustomed to the usual traffic of the area going through, and perhaps he may be the one who should stop, but is not expecting you to.
You are right. Particularly because red light works in tandem with other lights at the crossing.
When light turns red, it does not mean other light in the crossing turns green immediately. At the crossing for sometime all the lights should be red, to cover the case of signal change after a vehicle has entered the crossing.
>How am I supposed to know how quickly your yellow light changes on this street?
As a driver, you are not supposed to know this, nor should you base your driving based on this information.
It's simple: if you have enough distance to stop, you stop[1].
The yellow light is supposed to be timed so that people who don't have the distance to stop when going the speed limit would have enough time to legally pass the intersection[2].
The engineer's case (and many others) is that the lights are adjusted specifically so that this does not happen, i.e. people on a certain stretch of a road have are forced to cross on red if they don't decelerate unsafely.
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[1] Your stopping distance only depends on your speed, road conditions, and reaction time.
I always thought there should be some line, marking, or sign that conveyed "if the light turns yellow before this line, at the posted speed limit you will not make the light" because it can be a hard call most of the time.
In Canada at least, some intersections (generally on major thoroughfares) have a “prepare to stop” light well ahead of the traffic light. If that light is flashing, the traffic light will be yellow or red by time you get to it. Of course, some people use this light as a reason to floor it to try to make the light...
The crosswalk is not part of the intersection, so it's the latter definition. For example, blocking a crosswalk and blocking an intersection are separate offenses.
The law says that you should stop at a yellow light. The yellow light is an announcement that it will become red, so a though break isn't necessary. Sure a classic law/solution that doesn't consider how humans beings think :-)
The goal of the red light is to keep folks out of an intersection so that cross-traffic and pedestrians can proceed. Furthermore, in congested traffic, blocking the intersection can lead to massive gridlock.
Lights seem incredibly inefficient to me. How many times have I been driving towards a green at the speed limit and it turns yellow just in time to force me to slam on the brakes or the gas pedal, all to let one waiting car go? Why not detect my coming and wait for an efficient yellow timing, thus I am not wasting gas and braking unnecessarily? This would substantially improve carbon emissions and brake dust, yet dozens of times per month, I see lights inefficiently block traffic unnecessarily.
You can't always do this with current traffic planning. In busier areas you have to consider throughput at _other_ junctions and not just the immediate one. Changing one light's timing could make zero difference to that junction, but could totally screw up traffic flow downstream of it.
Agreed. The traffic light paradigm that I've seen popping up more often (which really bothers me) is the red left turn arrow. Light's green, no oncoming traffic; but can't make a very safe left because there's a red arrow staring back at me.
Ontario solves that by having there be a left green arrow + regular green light. The left green arrow indicates a protected left but you are also free to make an unprotected left on the regular green light, once the left green is off.
Australia and New Zealand have the same (except on the right turn arrow because we drive on the left).
I always thought this was normal. If the right turn arrow is green you have right of way, if it's red you must stop, and if it's not illuminated you give way to oncoming traffic and turn when safe.
I've really loathed my time driving in socal coming from the midwest. The idea that I cannot turn left on green is one of the more appalling "features" of traffic management here (the way the lights work, in general is abhorrent). But slowly, throughout socal, I've seen the flashing yellow left-turn arrow; a subtle change to the UX that I think is brilliant and should be adopted everywhere.
If I remember correctly, in Southern California, some intersections have an additional left-turn arrow which flashes yellow, indicating that you may make the left turn if there is no oncoming traffic.
It's a separate light to make the flashing-yellow to solid-yellow transition clearer.
Explanation, for those who don’t understand the problem: in some states, like New York, a red arrow is different than a red circle in that it prohibits turn-on-red.
In other states, like Washington, the red arrow is equivalent to the red circle. We even have left-turn-on-red, so (unless you’re stuck behind an out-of-towner) this tends to be much less of an issue.
For those Washingtonians that didn't know about left-on-red (I didn't before a couple weeks ago), you can turn left on red (or a red arrow) as long as it's from a one- or two-way street onto a one-way street (or freeway on-ramp), after a stop and if it's clear.
I've never done it myself and don't intend to start since I think it's a bit obscure and I don't want to argue with a cop about it if I get pulled over.
The variety in individual state traffic light rules is fascinating, and something that certainly doesn't help for US travelers. Some states are left-turn-on-red, others are not, telling which is which is not always obvious.
(For instance, Kentucky is no left-turn-on-red [either red arrow or full red; mostly the state doesn't use red arrows because they'd be redundant in that case], but allows for left-turn-may-yield on flashing yellow/amber.)
Seems like the only possible reason to me... sadly we live in a society that caters to the lowest common denominator rather than demanding and rewarding excellence. I worry for future generations.
When I lived in Tucson AZ almost every light was set up for lagging left turns. Where you can go when it's safe, but in the event of heavy traffic you'd be able to count on having a green arrow to empty the left turn lane - worked great!
>sadly we live in a society that caters to the lowest common denominator rather than demanding and rewarding excellence
You can't demand and reward excellence with car driving, because by assuming that people are all highly competent, you'll end up with lots of fatal crashes because of all the people who aren't competent. You can only assume car drivers are competent in societies where there's plenty of options for people who don't or can't drive, and America made the decision to not be such a society, so everyone has to be able to drive, even if they're an idiot.
I don't think that we have to assume competence when we have a system in place for issuing licenses, but you do have a point about people needing access to transportation. I do believe that any real solution would have to provide reasonable alternatives for people who do not meet the requirements. I also don't feel like the bar has to be raised much with regard to the licensing, but currently (and I believe knowledge of this to be reflected in some patterns of traffic control) the bar is clear-able by all with little to no competence check.
>I do believe that any real solution would have to provide reasonable alternatives for people who do not meet the requirements.
Sorry, but that's completely impossible. You simply cannot have a spread-out, car-based society with "reasonable alternatives" for people who can't drive, unless perhaps you're going to heavily subsidize Uber and Lyft. Buses and trains don't work well in suburbs; trains only make sense with enough density to have enough ridership, and buses only make sense to fill in where train lines don't exist. In the suburbs, people stuck taking the bus get penalized with ridiculously long transit times, because the bus takes a long, circuitous route, only comes once or twice an hour, etc. That isn't a "reasonable alternative" when people with a car get get there in 10 minutes or less.
So you have two choices: a society like Germany's where at least in urban areas it's easy to get around without a car, and then you can have a very high competency requirement for car drivers; or a society like America's, where the whole society is designed for cars (except for a small handful of urban cores) and you have to have a car to achieve a middle-class existence, so you cannot have a high competency requirement because otherwise you are restricting peoples' right to movement and travel.
Offering reasonable alternatives is impossible? Why can't we begin to restructure our society to be more like, in your example; Germany, so that it is possible? Just because there are steps to providing alternatives doesn't make their eventual existence impossible, right?
The way it is now (with the sprawl that we currently have), yes, due to physics. You can't change physics. There just isn't any way to make a bus a viable transit alternative in a sprawling suburban area; everything is just too far apart.
>Why can't we begin to restructure our society to be more like, in your example; Germany, so that it is possible?
Well I wasn't really talking about long-term, I was talking more short-term, with the assumption that the sprawl we have will remain or be extended. I simply don't see any attempts in this country to increase density, except perhaps the "urban growth boundary" around Portland.
Sure, I'd love to see this country decide it wants to be more like Germany or Japan and stop all new sprawl, and instead require higher density development near city cores, so that public transit is more feasible, and also provide more funding for transit construction (since that usually drives density: people frequently want to live close to the subway stations). But there's a lot of fanciful things that I'd like to have; that doesn't mean very many people agree with me, and I don't see much agreement with me on this issue in America today, at least not from the voters.
> sadly we live in a society that caters to the lowest common denominator rather than demanding and rewarding excellence.
I find that an odd perspective on successful public safety rules and policies with the aim of reducing serious injury and death during a dangerous activity.
If they were serious about improving safety they’d have stricter licensing requirements. A one-legged turkey can probably get licensed in the states I’ve lived in. Once he gets it, it’s his for life. No need to prove he’s kept up his knowledge and skill. He just needs to take the occasional eye test. I see frequent conversations on Nextdoor about traffic laws where people are getting very basic stuff just plain wrong. Some of that could be explained by people moving here from other states, but it’s usually stuff in the driver’s handbook and in the worst case just doing a search of the vehicle code will give you the answer.
I think we'd see much greater reduction of serious injury and death by implementing stricter requirements and better training than simply doing our best after the fact to make sure everything is idiot-proof. A proactive approach rather than a reactive one.
I’m not sure there is a ton of utility in complaining about societal stupidity, right? How does complaining that people don’t follow rules help us be safer? What would you propose as an alternative to “cater[ing] to the lowest common denominator” for public health and safety issues?
I'm not intending to complain, just presenting a viewpoint that minimum requirements are okay when it comes to regulation of shared resources, like the road. I don't believe that the requirements should be lowered beyond a reasonable level to cater to the incapable. I'd prefer a society which invested more in training and education as a form of harm prevention than implementing rules which reduce harm at the expense of the trained individual.
Specifically related to driving: I believe that the licensing requirements should be slightly higher and that more should be done to guard against bad driving and not just illegal driving. E.g. I've never seen anyone get a ticket for getting on the highway going a third of the speed of traffic, but that's certainly dangerous. Instead, people get tickets for exceeding a limit set by the capabilities of the lowest common denominator by a small percentage regardless of conditions (often not particularly dangerous - not an excuse for reckless driving, of course).
I simply think that there are better solutions. For one, public transportation.
> Why not detect my coming and wait for an efficient yellow timing, thus I am not wasting gas and braking unnecessarily?
At that scale trying to do anything clever will cost billions. Most red lights don't even detect motorcycles standing right on top of their sensor, we're decades away from smart lights detecting your car speed/distance and computing the most optimised yellow light timing.
Also, in most cases you should be able to roll off the throttle and coast to the light without having to aggressively brake. If it's not the case the yellow light is not timed well and you can contact the company handling the roadwork in your city.
In most countries, if you cross the line or enter the intersection while the light that applies to you is red, it is a violation. This means that unless the yellow light is long enough to account for approaching drivers' reaction times/distances and braking times/distances it can result in crash stops. Many lights in every country I've driven in have an insufficient yellow-light period given these considerations.
And jurisdictions with auto-ticketing based on red-light cameras shorten the yellow light, driving up income by making it very hard to avoid running a (barely) red light.
That doesn't seem true, France for example has automatic cameras at traffic lights, and the yellow light has a duration fixed by law (3s on urban streets, 5s outside cities) and it has not changed since traffic light cameras were introduced. So that's one jurisdiction where your assertion is false.
(Anyway, in most places the fines from the automatic cameras do not go to the same administration that decides the speed limits and places the traffic lights, so in the end the common accusation of "they only want to make money from it" doesn't make that much sense)
He meant jurisdictions in America. Local governments here are infamous for shortening yellow lights. The companies that make automated cameras even have it in their contracts that the cities must do this.
> The contracts in place with red-light camera providers often specify maximum yellow light times
There's a lot of room for weaseling the way that's written. The contracts could specify maximum times to cover incorrect configurations like 2 minutes - that would be sensible. Technically the article is correct but it leads the reader to conclude malicious intent where there may be none.
Only the DigitalTrends article talked about contract imposed maximums. In the Chicago article it looks like the city that was acting in bad faith. There is no established link between provider imposed contracts violating best practices.
I didn't state that it was universal. It does happen to be true. You can look it up. There are even links elsewhere in this thread. Last I read about it was some time ago, but I doubt it has been fixed.
The border is at issue: I could stop in time, but I'd have to stop as fast as my car is able which is uncomfortable. Oh, and I just completed my regular mirror check, and so I don't know how long the yellow has been up. Do I stop or continue on?
That’s a little pithy, how about: When approaching a stoplight you should be looking ahead during the window when a green to yellow transition would be important information.
Also, checking behind you has minimal value for drivers. Rather than any pattern it should be your absolutely last priority as it very rarely provides useful information and may be dangerous. That said, you should maintain basic awareness behind you.
> Also, checking behind you has minimal value for drivers.
I think I'll keep tracking who's behind me, how close, whether anyone new has appeared, whether anyone looks likely to pass me soon, and so on, because it's sure as hell been important in practice. Most notably when something goes even slightly wrong in front of me.
It’s an absurd statement anyway. It informs you of what other traffic is doing, where you can safely expect to maneuver in an emergency, and etc.
In one case, I’d say checking my rearview was worth thousands of dollars and maybe three lives. When approaching a crosswalk and reducing my speed to stop for pedestrians I saw clearly the guy behind me wasn’t going to stop (he maintained his speed and was looking down, probably texting). I honked and flashed to warn the pedestrians who stayed out of the crosswalk. Then I took my foot off the brake as the other car hit me. The damage was minimal because I just let him push me. I pulled into a nearby parking lot. The other guy took off without stopping. It was a new car so no rear plate.
If I hadn’t looked I’d have tried to stop, been pushed into the pedestrians anyway unless they noticed on their own, and my car would likely have been totaled.
That does not support ignoring traffic lights during the most critical 5 seconds to look behind you. Defensive techniques like slowing down when someone tailgates you are useful, but usually looking behind before and accident doesn’t enable you to do anything useful.
Also, talking your foot off the break increased the risk in that accident. If the driver had swerved at the last second they could have sent your car into the pedestrians you where trying to protect. In a rear end collision momentum pulls your foot from the peddle. So, you want to be hard breaking at the moment of impact to minimize the distance you move post collision.
Honking may have been useful, however unless you gave then ~2+ seconds of warning it was probably futile. Walking speed may be 4.5 feet per second, but acceleration and reaction times are not instantaneous.
> ...ignoring traffic lights during the most critical 5 seconds to look behind you.
> Oh, and I just completed my regular mirror check, and so I don't know how long the yellow has been up. Do I stop or continue on?
These statements are not describing the same activity.
> As to breaking, or saving the car:
Your link agrees with me. Read Tom's last paragraph. There was no traffic in front of me. The pedestrians were safely off the road because I honked and flashed. In the case that the pedestrians had kept going, I'd have done things differently. But it doesn't matter; because the point isn't whether braking or not braking was the correct decision.
The point is that by looking in the rear view mirror I became aware that a decision needed to be made.
> These statements are not describing the same activity.
Yes they are. The window when the length of a yellow light matters is short. If check your rear view mirror right before the intersection then even if the light turns yellow that’s irrelevant you’re still going to cross. Alternatively, if you’re very far from the intersection, then not noticing a yellow light for ~2 seconds is irrelevant, you need to stop regardless of how long it’s been yellow at that point. The transition between those states is very rapid.
> The pedestrians where safely off the road.
There was still pedestrians around you. A rear end collision that’s directly bumper to bumper pushes you forward. But, it’s possible for someone to try and evade at the last second which means they and you go in some random direction, possibly onto a sidewalk or other objects near the road.
No, they aren't. You misrepresented his point, and now you're changing the argument.
> So, unless they where well behind you, picking your foot off the break was a poor choice for their safety.
You're still making things up. Nothing you have linked here supports your claims. When a car collides with another car, things can happen with variable degrees of predictability. Yet, you are arguing with certainty that despite a successful outcome I made the wrong decision in a situation for which you don't have all the facts. I'm not sure how you hope any of this will convince me I did the wrong thing.
Perhaps ironically, even by arguing that there was a right thing to do, you implicitly acknowledge that your previous statement about rear view mirrors which I objected to was wrong.
No, I said his situation was avoidable and said how to avoid it, thus invalidating his point. Talking about how to safely drive drunk ignores the possibility to not get into that situation.
As to your situation, you where not responding to a traffic light. In my original post I specifically said maintaining awareness was import, just a low priority. Checking your rear view window while breaking is perfectly reasonable as long as your not maneuvering to avoid a collision. As described not checking the rear view minor would have likely resulted in a near identical outcome, honking may have have
helped or been pointless we don’t know.
As to making things up, my statement is in response to the correct action on a rear end collision based on the information you had at the time. Saying it was a good idea using information unavailable at the time is like lottery winners saying they made the correct choice. However, as people can’t actually see the future it’s possible to make a poor gamble that pays off.
Similarly, you where lucky that the oncoming car did not swerve at the last second which you had not way of predicting or responding to as your limited by human reaction times. The first videos I showed demonstrated my point but I don’t think you understand the physics involved. Watch the first shot here. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JszLYsU1Duo On a side impact ball 1 moves to the left, and ball 2 moves to the right. Now, considering that rewatch the first video with that idea. If you where rear ended at an angle you could have been shoved into the direction of the sidewalk as the other car was shoved away. The second video I posed starts with a collision like with a car being shoved to the left, except it’s hitting a stationary school buss who’s breaks and higher mass avoid significant movement.
If you still don’t understand, I can only suggest learning some basic physics from online videos or whatnot.
PS: And really your argument about not breaking is balancing people’s safety vs an slightly lower repair bill. That’s really hard to justify.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2016/362/schedule/14/made says:
"(9) An amber signal, when shown alone, conveys the same prohibition as red, except that, as respects any vehicle which is so close to the stop line that it cannot safely be stopped without proceeding beyond the stop line, it conveys the same indication as the green signal which was shown immediately before it."
If you interpret this to the letter, it means that if there's no car behind you, you should indeed come to a screeching halt at an amber light. If it's "safe" to stop, then amber means stop.
Not saying I agree with this, but that's what the law says.
Not sure how you read it that way. "Screeching to a stop" is absolutely not "safely stopped."
Maybe we're using "screeching" differently. If I need to jam on the brakes such that there is a chance the car my skid, or someone with a seatbelt might be injured, that is not "safe," and the law says I should keep going. Absent those things, I'm not screeching to stop but just stopping short.
There's a middle ground in there that's completely safe but also very unpleasant. I might exaggerate it as a "screeching halt". It should not be required by the letter of the law.
Not sure that doing an emergency stop unless really required is safe - you could always get a tank slapper or potentially case injuries to passengers if say they are reaching for something and bash their hand etc into the internal parts of the car.
"Screeching" to a stop is never a "safe" stop. A driver is traveling too fast for the conditions and the road if he has to screech to a stop when he sees yellow.
It shouldn’t. Yellow lights are supposed to last an amount of time based on the speed limit at that section so this doesn’t happen.
Traffic simulations are generally quite complex. In your proposal, if your approach is not detected correctly, you either stop traffic for a car which isn’t there, or you never stop traffic for a car which is there.
I would love to learn more about traffic simulations they use. I saw some software traffic simulators in college and they looked nice but in no way included real-world driving.
It’s hard to imagine, given how bad traffic is, that our streets were planned by sophisticated computer simulations. There’s one place near me where it can take nearly an hour to go 3 blocks during rush hour, due to people blocking the box. Do simulations take that into account?
There have been research showing that while a majority of people who sit in an intersection with timers appreciate them… It also increases the number of accidents because people spend too much attention to the timer and fail to look at the environment whether or not it is safe to accelerate. There is also evidence that suggest that countdown timers from green to red cause more drivers to accelerate and increase the risk of accidents there as well.
Not for individual car owners, but in Japan some buses connect with neighboring signals which are more likely to turn green when the buses are approaching. Having buses usually quite close to schedule probably helps
My solution is to have a blinking green, which indicates that it’s about to turn yellow. We might also lengthen the yellow duration, but knowing that the light will switch gives time to decide if you can speed up or decelerate safely, without wasting energy.
I’d be very curious to see how a blinking green system plays out in tests.
Another thought: if we manage traffic like regulating fluid flow and pressure, we could avoid situations where a single car exiting a parking lot shuts down the highway instantly. That single car should have to wait maybe 5-10 seconds before triggering the lights, and the blinking green would let highway drivers adjust. Forcing 20 cars to rapidly stop for an already stopped car makes no sense.
As the single car waits, pressure “builds” so to speak, and eventually the light decides that the fluid flow should change.
This bugs me. $50 of hardware can accomplish this, today. Raspi running vehicle detection code. If something is coming and the other way is clear, why not flip the intersection before it arrives?
> $50 of hardware can accomplish this, today. Raspi running vehicle detection code.
That's only true if you want hardware that sometimes detects some kind of vehicles, in the right weather and from the right angles.
Truly reliably detecting this is much further away. The consequences of not getting it right are not as catastrophic as getting it wrong in a self-driving car, but they could still mess traffic up pretty badly.
I've thought about this and my own take on it is this is actually an opportunity that has not yet been exploited. The cost of the hardware is $50 now, but that has only recently become the case.
Your reaction might be that it has been $50 for like 5 or 10 years now, and if so my response is that in this area, that is recent. It's a pretty slow-moving, late adopter industry. Most of the equipment getting installed probably hasn't been redesigned in years or decades. The people approving stuff want to buy from known vendors. The vendors are making money steadily now and don't want to go out on a limb with unproven tech.
Which doesn't mean it's impossible. I interpret it the opposite way: the fact that it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't or can't. I would expect it to take this long or longer.
Also, I think the angle for getting this adopted isn't really efficiency, it's cost saving. Right now, some lights are on sensors (instead of just timing) but they do it with induction loops (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_loop). If you could match or surpass the reliability of those at a lower cost, you might get people to switch.
But once you've crossed that hurdle, you can improve efficiency too, of course.
Of course, you have to keep in mind that the camera has to be mounted in the proper position. So it's probably not really $50 of hardware unless you can (in most cases, at least) piggyback on something that already exists. Although that seems possible because the signal light does need to be visible by cars approaching the intersection.
$1.5M (maybe 3X that with other costs) is literally a rounding error for the US federal budget: expenditures are $4.4T and revenue is $3.4T (that $1T/yr deficit is maddening btw).
It's probably easier to install than the typical sensor loop under the asphalt. The camera and cpu could be on the same circuit board as one of the LED lens units, which are already sealed units heated against snow. It would need an additional comm line down to the controller from each light head, which might just be a cable pull through conduit.
Besides being weather proof it would also need to be theft proof. It would also probably have to pass some sort of certification(s) as it would control traffic lights which could be dangerous in case of malfunctions, regular tests, &c.
I'm all for optimising things but sometimes it's just not worth the hassle. A well timed orange light is good enough.
In addition, even if it is inside an enclosure, it has to be able to withstand the elements (including extremes of temperature and humidity), and be able to have virtually 100% availability outside of power-loss situations.
This may or may not be true. In one of the areas near us, they installed red light cameras and had short yellows. You'd be on a 55mph road and get a 2-3 second yellow. Slamming on the brakes or running the red were the 2 options. With a 4 second yellow (which is actually state law), you can come to a normal stop. You could fight your ticket in court, but you had to prove the yellow was short. The state highway department had equipment you could use to time the light to prove your case. Time consuming, but doable if you didn't have a job or were retired. If you did that, you would get off, but they would still not change the light. Pretty ridiculous.
I think California changed the law, so it's legal to enter on the yellow. If it changes to red doesn't matter. However you can't block the box either. That was specifically to prevent muni's from shortening the yellow to generate revenue.
Where I’m from in southern USA, there are 65mph state highways with 4 way traffic light intersections. There is always a “stop light ahead” sign, and the rule is simple: if you are traveling the speed limit and you pass the “stop light ahead” sign before the light starts to change, you will clear the yellow phase.
In Idaho, where they also have 65+ mph highways with traffic light intersections, they have the "stop light ahead" signs, but instead of having long yellow lights, there are lights on the "stop light ahead" sign. (The lights on the sign will start flashing several seconds before the traffic lights change to yellow.) The rule is basically the same though, if you pass the sign before its lights start flashing, you'll make it thru the intersection, otherwise, start slowing down.
We have these in places in Florida. I still slow down (but not slower than the posted min) through these intersections. I've seen way too many accidents on these types of intersections to trust anybody.
Driving in Canada was the first I've encountered stop lights on such a high speed road (I think maybe it was less, perhaps 50mph). I have to say it felt pretty crazy. However, the same situation in the UK would have a roundabout with half a mile of yellow warning lines on the run up to it.
Longer yellow lights are more dangerous! It should be a signal to stop -- but if long enough, it becomes a signal to "speed up and hurry through." Amsterdam has very short yellow lights, but the result is that when you see yellow, you stop.
Around three years ago the yellow time in the Netherlands got increased with 0.5 seconds[0] based on research of driver behaviour in yellow light situations[1].
The conclusion is that overall people's behaviour wouldn't change much when there was more yellow time (in both 'stopping' and 'running' drivers). But that for a small portion of the 'running' drivers (the 'risk takers', who also just won't stop if the light has already turned red) the amount who jumped red would reduce.
In the time after that I noticed a lot more cars
that I felt where jumping the red light. But if that is due to the increase of the decision time or that the changing to red for one lane and change to green for the other lane are closer together I don't know.
In California (I don't know Oregon) the law is that you can't enter an intersection under red. Unless you have countdown timers (or a good orthogonal view), you don't know when a light will turn red. The yellow, then, should be long enough for you to safely exit the intersection (under congestion laws you usually are not allowed to enter an intersection if there is not room for you to exit it) assuming the other direction turns green (very shortly) after red. An alternative safe solution would be to extend the time between red and opposing green (non-overlap) and keep yellows shorter.
Frankly, it's strange to me that even 0.12 sec was not enough, if the camera was only focused on the entry into the intersection. My guess is that it was shooting rear plates in the intersection, and catching turning cars (to maximize revenue)... Of course there are states where entering under a yellow is prohibited, but then we've legislated Pi to be 3 too.
Now, I have also seen Bostonians jump off the line before a light turned green and that would certainly have me stomping my brakes into a stale yellow, but I'm not sure it's safer.
What dumbasses came up with that rule? Isn't the whole point of the yellow light to signal that it will turn red soon, and that people have to make a choice?
So if you drive up to a green light then you have to stop, wait for the red light and then drive when it turns green again to ensure that you're not running a yellow light.
Around here (Europe) the meaning of yellow is "stop and don't enter", almost equivalently to red. The only difference is that if at the moment the light turns red you are so close and so fast that you cannot stop safely, then you can continue. So you have to make a decision, but it's not really a "choice".
In practice yellow phases are too long and taken by many as a signal to speed up and speed through. I don't think police enforce the rules here, but this is clearly prohibited.
> if at the moment the light turns red you are so close and so fast that you cannot stop safely, then you can continue.
If you are still travelling fast at the lights when they turn red, you must have been ignoring the yellow light, so this makes no sense. The whole point of the yellow light is to ensure that you have time to stop before the lights go red, making running the red lights inexcusable.
Not that I've never run a red light, I'm no angel, but this argument is absurd.
IME making a left turn on a yellow is more dangerous than waiting for the light to turn red and quickly making the turn, as long as you are already in the intersection. Turning on yellow means racing oncoming traffic trying to beat the light, while turning on red just means traffic has to wait a bit for you to clear the intersection.
This begs the question: why don't we have visible countdown timers? Now that I think about it, I use the adjacent crosswalk's counter timers to judge when to expect a yellow/red light when I can see them.
Especially professional drivers act like yellow is "speed up" light. There's not a single day when I don't notice multiple people driving on red during my commute.
Excuse the anecdote over links to actual studies, but one of my old roommate's father worked on traffic light systems that time the yellow light based on the speed of cars approaching. They extended the time for cars that couldn't stop safely or that were accelerating to get through the light. This apparently reduced accidents at those intersections.
Yup, but that's custom tech your municipality sprung for. In the '90s there was a town I lived in whose lights identified your approach and changed to green for you as you arrived (at low density times). If you went the speed limit, you never stopped or slowed down.
I've pined for that tech in every place I've lived since. :-D
I seem to run across the opposite: I'm approaching a green on a night with practically no traffic, and the thing changes, timed to go red before I could get through the yellow. So I sit, waiting while it's green the other way, and no traffic in sight.
Tie it into a weather API so we can have a longer pause between red and green depending on weather conditions to give people time to slide through the intersection.
> When Järlström brought the issue to the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying, [they] fined him $500 [...] for practicing engineering without a professional license.
Wow, as described this is outrageous. It's not like he was out there changing the lights himself. He made a proposal. I guess that's why he won the court case, although I think that might go too far as well: requiring licenses for engineers makes sense. It should be required for actually implementing changes, though, not just talking about them.
>requiring licenses for engineers makes sense. It should be required for actually implementing changes, though, not just talking about them.
In civil engineering, some engineer on the project (usually the head engineer) has to be licensed, and has to sign off on it, and this makes him liable if the engineering is faulty.
What happened in this guy's case is simply that, in his letter, he called himself "an engineer", and the state board slapped a fine on him for the audacity of calling himself an engineer without a PE license. He wasn't "practicing", he was making a proposal in the form of a letter.
It's good that he got it reverse and free speech won, but look at what he had to do to accomplish that. The state board should be forced to pay him an enormous fine for attempting to restrict his free speech.
They did not fine him right off the bat, there was some back and forth where, possibly because of a language issue, they got the impression that he was asserting himself as a licensed engineer. That's bad in nearly every jurisdiction in most places in the world.
It seems like the main issue here is the automated ticket generation from traffic cameras, not the yellow light timing. People generally police themselves in traffic out of self-interest for their own vehicles. Nanny cams meant to issue fines at every intersection are an egregious overreach.
At least here in Europe yellow means 'stop in safety conditions'. So if the driver saw yellow and didn't stop then they can't blame that the red light came too fast because they should be stopped already.
There is more to this story. What really happened is the company that contracted with the Oregon town to implement these red light cameras tweaked the yellow light settings to "increase safety", err I mean increase revenue for both the municipality and themselves.
The issue is that somebody decided that you should be clear of the intersection as soon as the light turns red but it is not enough time if you travel slowly or if you need to turn left.
If you close to the intersection you might still see green or yellow very briefly but the act of slowing down to turn left is enough for you to run in red light territory and get fined.
There apparently is a formula that calculates how long travelers need to leave the intersection and, presumably, if you are still there it means you ran red light. It seems the formula is wrong as it does not grant enough time for lawful travelers in normal conditions.
> There apparently is a formula that calculates how long travelers need to leave the intersection and, presumably, if you are still there it means you ran red light. It seems the formula is wrong as it does not grant enough time for lawful travelers in normal conditions.
The condition of waiting for oncoming traffic to clear the intersection so that you may safely make a turn across the oncoming traffic stream is a common one, and presumably leaves most drivers in the intersection when the light turns red in dense traffic.
I witness drivers in this situation just sitting right where they are, past their stop line, left signal blinking, far too close to the perpendicular travel lanes, refusing the clear the intersection until they get the arrow.
Worse: they're the only ones wanting to turn, they're past the sensor, and the next cycle is solid green only.
> So if the driver saw yellow and didn't stop then they can't blame that the red light came too fast because they should be stopped already.
Huh? Even if you slam your brakes immediately when the light turns yellow, you might not stop on time if the yellow light is only on for, say, 100 milliseconds if you were close enough to the intersection.
This isn't at all as simple as you make it out to be, and the article made a pretty good point.
I'm not sure if I misunderstand you, but that seems dangerous What if it changes to yellow just before you get to the line, are you supposed to slam on the breaks or risk getting a fine for going through on amber?
In the UK the amber means "prepare to stop" but only if you can do so safely. If you are too close to stop then you should carry on through (which should be safe as all other lights should be red at this point).
Yellow lights are in a gray area (pun intended ;-)
You're supposed to stop safely but you're supposed to have "mastery of your vehicle" at all time.
So basically it all boils down to the mood of the cops. I would say it's not frequent to be fined for a yellow (never happened to me in more than 20 years of driving) but I'm pretty sure it would fail your driving license exam.
I think (but I'm not sure) that traffic light cameras only catch red lights.
ainiriand said 'stop in safety conditions' which is also the law in France. The problem is proving you couldn't stop in safety conditions when you receive the fine.
> Article R412-31 du Code de la route. Vous devez obligatoirement vous arrêter au feu orange, sauf si cela doit vous conduire à un danger.
Follow the classic Starman explanation, red light stop, green light go, yellow light go really really fast.[1]
In my state you are permitted to enter an intersection if the light is solid yellow which is used to indicate it till soon be red. We also have recently seen an expansion of the yellow left turn signals that can be yellow while your main lane is red, meaning you can make a left turn as long as oncoming traffic permits. Those actually made things much better at many intersections.
still when I learned to drive I was told if I was turning and the first car in line that I should be in the intersection ready to turn which could mean completing the turn on red
This is how it is in Germany at least. Yellow means "stop unless doing so would result in a dangerous situation", i.e. unless you'd have to brake hard in order to come to a full stop before crossing the line.
It really depends on the country. Generally speaking yellow means stop if you are able to stop safely. There is also rule that even if you have green light you cannot enter intersection while it is congested and there are cars inside. So if you enter on yellow and the other traffic hit you it is their fault.
If you cannot stop safely then you hit the pedal so that you clear the intersection asap since stopping to full stop in the middle of it is bad idea.
Now I wish green lights had strobes to wake up zombies looking at their phones. I'm going to wear out my horn at this point due to people treating a red light like phone time out and not paying attention.
Enh, that's annoying, but easily fixed by a polite quick-tap on the horn. I've made a conscious decision not to let it stress me out when someone adds all of 5 seconds to my commute.
I'm more annoyed by the people who lay on the horn like a New York cabbie if I'm half a second late off the line (sometimes because of an obstruction they can't see).
You aren’t supposed to take that too seriously. The cabbies are usually doing it for dramatic effect for their passenger. It works for me when I’m in a cab and my cabbie honks at people. Feels like he’s trying to get somewhere on time. Probably if I paid attention, I would see him honking at people waiting for legitimate reasons.
I have to honk more than a second to get them to realize I'm honking at them. And 9 times out of 10 unless I honk I won't make the light because I'm 2 cars back and the people in front are either not paying attention too, or are too scared to honk. The worst are left green arrow snoozers.
Clearly we need a standard for traffic lights to push alerts to neighboring phones and a regulation mandating its deployment to traffic lights and support by handset vendors.
If you are approaching a turn, you should be driving at a fraction of the speed limit before even approaching the stop line. That seems to suggest that the time frame in which you can safely stop upon seeing a yellow light is correspondingly longer than when going straight at the speed limit.
So if anything, yellow light for turns should be shorter. If you are still in the intersection by the time the light goes red, it is probably because you had to brake hard when you realized you had to yield to someone (i.e. ped on a crosswalk going straight). In this case, you should absolutely get the ticket because all western driving codes expressly forbid entering an intersection unless you can promptly execute your turn without waiting; it is strict liability.
So sure, you go slower through an intersection when turning. But this entirely ignores that you had much more time to stop safely for the yellow light; braking distance is quadratic with speed, so the effect is even more lopsided.
Totally agree. Entering on yellow should be a last resort, that is not driven by the hurry.
In Ukraine we have 4 seconds of blinking green light before yellow, that should be more then enough to notice and slow down for full stop. But I do like much more traffic lights with number of seconds till light change (in Kharkiv almost all trafic lights are replaced with numbered one). This is incredibly usefull, cause You can notice numbers from long distance and plan route accordingly.
It's pitty that not all cities and countries go for traffic lights with timers.
What would make even more sense is to progressively change the lights to give the driver a better sense of the timing.
For example, in 2s intervals:
Green -> Green + Yellow -> Yellow + Red -> Red
This way, you not only know from a glance how stale the yellow is, but also you get a better indication of the timing. When a light simply goes Green -> Yellow -> Red, you have no frame of reference from which to gauge how long it will stay yellow, especially since every light has different timing.
You could even go one further, using blinking lights:
Solid green -> Green + Yellow (yellow blinks 3 times), Yellow + Red (red blinks 3 times) -> Solid red
And to improve traffic startup, you could do the opposite (Red -> Red + Yellow -> Green), as is done in many European countries.
That could be dangerous and confusing, the sequence needs to be unambiguous. The way it works in those european countries is that red+yellow always anticipates the green light, and yellow on its own indicates an imminent red.
Where I live some traffic lights also have a blinking green that precedes the yellow.
We used to have a blinking green light at the end of interval, but unfortunately it was used as an "accelerate" signal, so it has now been removed. Thankfully I have not had a problem with going too late into yellow. Generally I follow the simple rule of stopping whenever I am behind another car and only going through when I am really close to the lights.
Drivers accelerate through yellow where I am from all the time. Even though going through yellow is not allowed and is legally the same as running a red. If you can stop in time you should, even if it means braking hard (unless it is unsafe, eg a risk of getting rear-ended).
A lot of crashes this past summer too, even a few pedestrians got killed, tourist season, ubers and taxis usually causing it by speeding through intersections on yellow and red.
In Austria the green light blinks four times before going to yellow. Having grown up there I was actually kind of surprized to find out that this is not the standard elsewhere.
I’ve been thinking for a long time that a blinking yellow would be revolutionary and simple.
They should make the yellow begin to blink when it’s x number is seconds from going red. Because as is you have little reference to how soon it will shift.
Something like that has been tried before, using a timer display. It was pretty disastrous because people accelerated to beat the red. I think this was in China, so perhaps in other countries it might work better if the driving culture was more cautious.
Timers on the red seem to work well though, giving people advance waning to prepare to go, get in gear etc. There is one near me that seems to help get the traffic moving through faster when the lights change.
Good for him. My first street accident happened when I was 16 (two years before I started street racing--which btw is very dangerous, and for sure I don't advocate for it. Street racing is irresponsible, and street cars are sooo much flimsier than race cars, it's not even funny). I was in the Bronx (it was not legal for me to drive there at 16 btw) at an intersection crossing Mosholu Parkway. I was Not speeding, I was a novice driver--I looked up at light, it was green; when I crossed the intersection I was T-Boned by another car. Thankfully everyone was ok.
Back then, in certain areas of the Bronx and unbeknownst to me, there were traffic lights that only had two bulbs; one was green, one was red. There was No yellow light--the green and red lights would come on simultaneously which denoted "yellow". That almost killed us.
I took that as a good lesson a few months later as I started down the path of becoming a racer, And I follow this Rule assiduously to this day (to be clear;I no longer street race But I am still Extra careful on unknown roads); make sure you KNOW the road you are on before you drive fast on it. And TBH in my street racing days I would even take a drive by first to make sure there was no construction, broken water mains, ice or whatever happening... it's one of the main reasons I'm still alive.
That's far too optimistic. We may have autonomous vehicles by then, depending on his current age, but human driven vehicles will still exist. Signals aren't going away.
>Even a small timing increase would help – the automatically generated ticket in this case was issued 0.12 seconds after the light turned red.
The fact tickets were issued on the light turning red rather than the opposing light turning green should tell you all you need to know about whether this is intended to increase road safety or generate revenue.
In Atlanta, where yellow means "hurry up" and red means "ok go if traffic is still moving" I am not confident that longer yellows will result in higher safety.
Most accidents i've witnessed have been rear endings where a driver was not from Atlanta and stopped at a yellow.
We have the technology today to do this right - make the green and yellow lights have a countdown number, or blink slowly then quicker as time gets shorter (not sure if that might cause a person to have a seizure though for those prone?)
The problem is people don't know how long the green then yellow really is, nor when it is about to change from yellow to red. I've been using crosswalk countdowns where they're available, but they aren't always reliable in my city (Phoenix). Sometimes, it will hit zero - and the light will stay green.
But most of the time, when it hits zero, it will go from green to yellow, then you have roughly 3 seconds left.
> But most of the time, when it hits zero, it will go from green to yellow, then you have roughly 3 seconds left.
it depends a lot on the speed limit, at least where I live. the yellow light usually lasts a lot longer on a 45 mph road than a quiet 20 mph street.
I think having a countdown on the green light would be very helpful, but I worry that a countdown on the yellow light could lead to people cutting the red light even closer.
what I would really like to see in the US is a yellow light before the green so I know when it's time to put the car in gear. of course, this could also worsen the "drag strip" effect.
The time is also variable by location, even between proximate American cities. For instance, the yellows in Los Angeles seem to be substantially briefer than the ones in San Diego or Orange County.
Speaking of red lights, I have been wondering for a while now if they wouldn't be an ideal platform to experiment with image recognition for self driving vehicles? I can elaborate more, but you also get the benefit of fairer traffic lights.
I'm saying this as I commute by bike, and often have to wait at a red light, with no car in sight. Some have detectors, but they often don't work on bikes (even when putting my bike on the ground, in case of inductive sensors).
I think victimless crimes are kinda dangerous... THE STATE vs SO-AND-SO... Okay, yes, we need traffic laws, but some the people on the receiving end of their traffic violation should have some say. Did they feel endangered? Did they feel wronged? Or, was it justifiable?
The drug was is another example of the state vs so-and-so. The victims are somehow the users, but they're also the defendants. So, can they drop the charges against themselves?
This isn't a crime. It's extortion. It's a red-light camera, implemented in a way to take money from the citizenry and line the coffers of city government (though a % goes to the manufacturer of the camera).
Traffic lights are one of those bits of industrial design that you really don’t mess around with.
If you’d like a good old fashioned website to go with your coffee break, and you are now or would like to become interested in everything one could possibly need to know about British traffic lights, may I thoroughly recommend beno’s site to you?:
Many of the traffic lights in Boston seem to have significantly shorter yellow light durations than the rest of Massachusetts--roughly a single second. It's just one of the many factors that makes driving in Boston feel like a constant battle for survival.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world apparently considers 3 seconds to be too short. I'd be quite delighted if Boston followed suit.
Why should the transitions be a surprise? The lights should blink in a simple accelerating pattern used to signal impending transition. Then everyone knows how much time remains.
I always give traffic control stuff some leeway during rush hour since obviously traffic engineering has to make compromises, BUT I hate that no one cares about low traffic hours at all. I'm often going to or from a friends house that lives near a major highway with frequent lights. The lights are stuck on some timing such that driving the speed limit can result in getting stuck at nearly every stop light.
Where I live (big urban metropolis) it's completely normal and commonplace for at least 1 or 2 cars (and sometimes up to 3 or 4 cars) to pass through after the signal turned red. It seems drivers consider the yellow light to be pretty much the same as the green light.
I had an uncle who was color blind, as in fully color blind. When I was a kid I asked him how he could drive not knowing if he should stop or not.
What he said to me was "Green is on top, yellow is in the middle, red is on bottom." It's such a simple answer that I was amazed I hadn't thought of it.
What a bunch of pricks. Vogons couldn't have done any worse than the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying.