Posted by bugmenot on July 2, 2007 at 10:50 a.m. (Suggest removal)

What makes that intersection so accident prone?

Posted by Tabitha_D on July 2, 2007 at 12:12 p.m. (Suggest removal)

its those damn cameras! people are so paranoid when they get to them that they are more likely to stop at a just-turned yellow light, while the person behind them wants to make the light and speeds up. at least thats my opinion. the cameras are great for people running the red lights but for the people that are overly-cautious drivers reguarly are even more overly-cautious when the cameras are around. i'm not saying this is the victim's fault or anything. i just know that i've stopped not to get a ticket from those cameras and on many occassion the person behind me wants to make that yellow light and nearly plows into me. scares the heck out of me each time too. people need to remember that yellow means yield - not speed up and not slam on brakes.

God be with this family, my prayers are with you.

Posted by bugmenot on July 2, 2007 at 12:23 p.m. (Suggest removal)

There's something to be said about the cameras. I've seen the lights turn yellow and people slam on the breaks so hard that they lock up the tires and stop in time, but the lights are calibrated to still snap their picture. I've also seen people slam on their brakes at a yellow only to have the car behind them make a daring last second lane change and go through the intersection without the camera going off. You can't blame the people stopping though. The tickets are something like $371. To some people, that's a weeks worth of pay, that could be half of rent or money to live off of for a month. To some of the hard working people of this community a red light ticket will make a huge financial impact on them, and to receive it as a photo in the mail is a slap in the face. If you read about red light camera tickets almost anywhere else in the country, they RARELY exceed $100.

Does it even make our streets safer?

Here's a good roundup of links regarding studies done on red light cameras: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/04/4...

Now that I'm completely off topic, I was pretty sure a couple of those accidents at that intersection involved motorist hitting bicyclists.

Posted by bugmenot on July 2, 2007 at 12:37 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Not to mention most of the money from the red light tickets go to a company in Arizona that the city has a contract with. Everybody knows and complains that the cameras are just a revenue maker for the city, but in order for the lights to be financially feasible for the city, the fines are outrageous. If the fines were cut in half, they wouldn't be feasible and city would drop the argument that they make the intersections safer.

Has a study ever been done to see if people are vindictively running red lights that do not have cameras? I bet people are.

I'm not even going to mention invasion of privacy and precedent these cameras started. What stops the city from putting up live feed cameras (see Telephone and Victoria)? What's to stop these cameras from peering into a private residence? What's to stop these cameras from being used in a criminal case if they happened to catch something? Not that it would be a bad thing to put a criminal away, I just don't want a camera pointed into my house. It's the road I feel we're going down.

Tabitha Dean...see what you did! You got me all worked up about these cameras!!

Posted by Tabitha_D on July 2, 2007 at 1:17 p.m. (Suggest removal)

sorry bugmenot, didn't mean to get anyone worked up. but that's how i've always felt about these cameras, since day one. honestly, i've been on both sides of that fence - i've been thte one to get scared and slam on my brakes and the one to try to get through - its not safe either way. And you make a great point about how far they are starting to take it. when does it start to get too outrageous - too out of hand? as long as the city is saying "its to make the city safer" - which they always will - they will con't to put up things like this and worse.

Posted by theclass on July 2, 2007 at 1:36 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I don't remember camera's being at Telephone & Johnson??

Posted by Equitable_Enforcer on July 2, 2007 at 1:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Though I pass through that intersection daily, I was not aware that a camera had been installed. As for rear-enders, I'd be more interested to know the license and insurance status of the at-fault driver.

As long as a driver allows at least three seconds between his/her vehicle and the vehicle in front, regardless of the speed, a quick stop by a car in front is not a problem, camera or not.

Posted by Cat on July 2, 2007 at 1:45 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Yeah, I was just at this intersection on Friday and there aren't any cameras....everyone's getting the intersection confused (including the writer of this article). The one they're talking about is Victoria and Telephone.

Posted by AnnaWhaat on July 3, 2007 at 6 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Tabitha, That is right yellow does NOT mean speed up and try to make it. It clearly states that in the drivers handbook also. My husband was just rear ended due to the fact he stopped at the yellow light, cause he knew he wouldn't make it and the darn SUV behind him kept coming at him and well you know what happened from there. Rear ended.
Well I dont know but from the people I have talked to that have been caught by a red light camera the fine was in excess of 250.00. Never seen it lower then that. But those cameras are designed to go off only when the light is red and someone goes through it. So I dont see how it could be peeking into someones home? But I do believe the city makes alot of money from those cameras. Even though they are quite expensive to put up and keep running in the long run if put at a high risk intersection they are money makers !

Posted by ThinkingForMySelf on July 3, 2007 at 10:29 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Did any of you catch the fact that the car that rear ended the victim's car, had her husband and some 16 year old boy in it. It didn't say he was driving.

As for Cameras, I'm all for them at these troubled intersections. They reduce accidents by substantial amounts, saving lives. One of the the first was put in at Fair Oaks Blvd. and Watt Ave. in Sacramento. Everyday people ran lights and accidents and death were common at that intersection. After installation, accidents dropped and it became one of the safer intersections. I drove that regularly for years and the change in driver habits there improved dramatically.

In Philadelphia, there is a 12 lane Blvd., Roosevelt Blvd., that travels for miles. East Coast drivers are the worst drivers in the entire country. Routinely running lights, killing pedestrians and crashing into each other. In Philadelphia, traffic lights have a two second delay before turning green for one direction after the cross direction turns red. You would think this would allow for a safer margin of error in crossing the intersection, but, in fact, it makes it worse. For everyone knows that they can run a freshly turned red light with time to spare. So there are allot of accidents.

A couple of years ago, they started installing these cameras along Roosevelt's twelve lanes of roadway. Without giving tickets at first, people received a notice of violation. In the first days, It was common for the cameras to pick up over 10,000 (ten thousand) red light runners at everyone of those intersections everyday-EVERYDAY. With the issuance of tickets and fines, about $140.00, the violations are down to the low hundreds. The death toll has dropped as well.

I too had uncomfortable feelings of big brother but got over immediately when I saw the dramatic improvement resulting from their presence.

The important thing to know is if the camera's revenue is payed to the outfit that maintains them as a percentage of entire receipts or a flat rate over a defined period of time. We had two problems in Sac. One was the operator was paid a percentage, thus he enhanced his take by rigging the camera. That was fixed. The other was who issued the ticket. Private companies cannot issue tickets and or summons as what was going on up there. That was fixed as well.

Posted by shaver_one on July 3, 2007 at 1:14 p.m. (Suggest removal)

The husband was with the victim. The 16 year-old was a passenger in the other car. The author forgot a comma.
And, they do use sthe camera's snapshots in court...if you ever try to fight one of these tickets.
As far as cameras "all over the city"...just look at London. It is the most heavily camera-covered city in the world.

Posted by gail on July 4, 2007 at 2:48 p.m. (Suggest removal)

The author did not say the husband and the boy were in the same vehicle and did not forget a comma. He/she said, "Richlewski-Schmidt's husband and a 16-year-old boy who was a passenger in the other car also were injured.." In this sentence, two people were injured. One was R-S's husband. The other was a 16-year-old who was a passenger in the other car. If it said "Richlewski-Schmidt's husband and a 16-year-old boy, who were passengers in the other car, also were injured..." then we'd surmise both the husband and the boy were in the other car, but the singular "was" is the clue that only one of them was in the other car.

Posted by ThinkingForMySelf on July 5, 2007 at 3:07 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Thanks Shaver and Gail for clarifying my my miss-read. I appreciate it.