Texas bans red-light traffic cameras

A bill signed into law by the governor of Texas earlier this month has banned the use of red-light traffic cameras throughout the state.

The use of such cameras, which capture images of vehicles passing through an intersection while the stoplight is red, will end when cities’ current contracts with their vendors expire.

While supporters of the cameras have promoted them as a means to make traffic safer and generate funds via ticketing, the former and latter purposes have often found themselves at odds.

Studies by the Texas Transportation Institute found that cities had not considered alternative solutions prior to the installation of red-light cameras. In particular, improving the signal timing of stoplights (the time for which a yellow light is displayed before red) was much more effective at reducing traffic violations.

The issue then arises that most tickets issued in response to red-light camera captures occur just after the light has turned red, despite the majority of crashes occuring when drivers enter the intersection five seconds or more after the change.

In other words, the violations which generate tickets and thus funding are not those related to crashes. Meanwhile, in situations where signal timing reduces crashes, the red-light cameras do not catch enough violations to balance their own cost of upkeep.

Critics thus claim that there is a perverse incentive for cities using red-light cameras to avoid improving signal timing at stoplights in order to increase the number of ticketable violations and thus funds raised, while putting drivers at greater risk.