Archive for the ‘patience’ tag
Yellow Light Timers
As I mentioned in my previous post about unmarked police car pullovers, I don’t like revenue enhancement coming from traffic law enforcement. An issue has recently been brought to my attention again by the Battalion. Drivers running red lights have become an increasing problem in the College Station area. The city of College Station wants to put in cameras at the intersections to take pictures of the offending cars and send the tickets in the mail, without a patrol officer doing a single thing. This doesn’t do the most effective job of reducing red light runners. Having a timer in the yellow light to indicate the amount of remaining time before the red light would solve several problems.
First, for the law-abiding drivers, it gives them the time left to make a judgment call if they need to slam on the brakes or continue through. For that matter, you might as well have timers in all colors of the signal: red, yellow, and green.
Second, for the red light runners, it gives them no excuse for running the light. They knew how much time was left before it turned red. Now, after the timers are in place, I agree with the installment of the cameras, because the government in charge did everything to increase public safety without revenue enhancement, before they started ticketing people.
Third, for the city planners, studies would need to be done, but the timer lights may improve traffic efficiency slightly and increase driver patience. When motorists can count down the time left for green, it helps increase driver satisfaction with the length of the lights. There have been times when I could swear the red light for my time to go was three times as long as the cycle before me.
Just because we’ve had the standard green, yellow, red traffic signal lights for all of this time doesn’t mean we can’t change or improve on them if it would increase efficiency or safety. Adding timers to the lights would allow drivers to know exactly the time left before the next light. I know this would a beneficial addition to my driving experience.
