U.S. Can Save Millions With Red Light Cameras

New Studies Find Benefit Of Reducing Right-Angle Crashes Outweigh Rear-End Crashes

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 13, 2005) — Two new transportation safety studies have found that U.S. cities can potentially save millions of dollars in injury and societal costs by using red light camera photo enforcement technology.

The cost-benefit analysis, one of the most comprehensive ever conducted on the economic benefits of photo enforcement technology in the U.S., analyzed traffic data from seven U.S. communities that use cameras to enforce compliance with traffic signals.

Researchers estimate total societal cost reductions for all the red light camera jurisdictions studied to be over $14 million per year. This amount is completely separate from any revenue brought in by camera violation fines. In discussion of these findings at the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, the researchers called these estimates, “conservative.”

Campaign Executive Director Leslie Blakey said, “These new studies have shown that the average red light camera location in the U.S. results in $38,000 a year in reduced societal costs, not to mention the number of lives and grief saved from fewer right-angle crashes.”

The two studies compared the incidence of right-angle crashes, most frequently associated with red light running, to rear-end crashes that may increase, once photo enforcement devices are installed. The analysis found that although rear-end crashes increased as right-angle crashes declined, the reduction of the more severe red light running crashes resulted in the significant net benefit from photo enforcement deployment. When property-damage-only crashes were excluded, the benefit was almost five percentage points higher, due to the much greater costs from right-angle injury and fatal crashes.

“Any thorough study of intersection crashes has to reach the conclusion that a 30 mph crash into the driver’s side or passenger side of another vehicle will cause more deaths and injuries than a low speed rear-end crash,” said Lt. Richard Carlson, Commander of the Sacramento, CA Metropolitan Red Light Photo Enforcement Program. “These new studies confirm the benefit of red light cameras to a community. They save lives by reducing dangerous right angle crashes.”

The study also was able to identify a “spillover effect” of safety benefits from intersections located near red light camera-enforced intersections. Those intersections recorded decreases in right-angle crashes and no negligible increase in rear-end crashes.

Researchers, led by Bhagwant Persaud and Forrest Council, reviewed traffic data from; Baltimore, MD, Charlotte, NC, El Cajon, CA, Howard County, MD, Montgomery County, MD, San Diego, CA and San Francisco, CA

The studies, which were funded by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, were conducted by researchers at BMI-SG, Ryerson University in Canada and the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluations, and released Tuesday as part of the Transportation Research Board’s Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

Also of interest was a new study by researchers at the Texas Transportation Institute that found little or no traffic safety value for using an all-red interval at the end of every traffic sequence as a red light running countermeasure.

The National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running is a national advocacy group guided by an independent advisory board that includes leaders from the fields of traffic safety, law enforcement, transportation engineering, health care and emergency medicine, as well as crash victims. More information on the Campaign can be found at www.stopredlightrunning.com.