Many cities and counties have used red light cameras successfully to catch drivers who choose to speed through a red light rather than stop. Seems simple enough except that there is a timing element involved and just when exactly does that red light camera capture the photo of your driver’s license as you “break” the law?
Beaverton Oregon drivers found that one red light camera at an intersection there may have actually “tricked” them into going through a yellow light with the assumption that it would stay yellow for at least a few seconds before turning red. It is a split second decision whether or not to go through the yellow light or not and most drivers do assume that the yellow warning is just that, but there is a difference between going through a yellow light that gives is timed for 3.5 seconds and one that only allows just 1 before turning red. No driver
Apparently there are hundreds of drivers that received red light camera tickets while driving through this intersection and since many felt that there was something off about the timing of yellow to red. When one engineer’s wife got a red light ticket, he took the matter to task and did a digital frame by frame timing of the change from yellow to red.
What’s not tough to gauge, according to a local engineer, is the timing of the yellow light. “This yellow light is real short, its 4-percent off,” said Mats Jarlstrom, an engineer with expertise in calibration and electronics.
When Jarlstrom’s wife got a ticket at Lombard and Allen, he used digital cameras, frame-by-frame, to test if the timing of the yellow lights were calibrated the way the City of Beaverton had claimed they were. “I measured about 3.35 seconds, which is about 4-percent shorter,” he said.
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