Quote:
Originally Posted by Christ
For some reason, I imagine you're the only driver that does this. If that's true, your statement is self-defeating, because it relies on other drivers having to do the same thing as you're doing, which they most likely do not.
|
My wife does as well. Other drivers either floor it or lock them up, depending on how paranoid they are. The point is, I do this because I don't like to have to use near maximum braking in the course of my normal drive. (And I shouldn't have to.)
Quote:
|
The fact is, that there is no decision to brake or floor it. Read the law. If a cop notices you attempting to beat a yellow light, you can be stopped and ticketed in many states. They don't want you to go through the yellow light.. there's a difficult concept, I see.
|
Since I am only speeding up to the speed limit when I decide to go for it, they can't do a damn thing.
Quote:
|
Yellow does not mean "make a choice" or "keep going - it's not red yet" it means "yield and prepare to stop".
|
Really? So when you're 25 feet from the intersection, the law says you have to stop and can't go through?
Quote:
|
If I can't stop at it, I keep going through it, and it's only because I was within 100 feet of the light when it turned yellow anyway.
|
B-B-But you just broke the law. Yellow does not "make a choice" or "keep going", remember?
Quote:
|
Maybe I posted incorrectly... I should have posted the 30-0 time for the heaviest vehicle I could find under the worst possible non-inclement conditions... maybe that would get you to realize that 3 seconds is actually quite a long distance.
|
The intersection in question is 50 mph. Given 50 mph and 2.5 seconds (I'm giving .5 seconds as a VERY generous reaction time, since we're apparently now required to hover our foot over the brake pedal lest the light turn yellow), that's 183 feet. The '97 Geo Metro has a stopping distance of 156 feet from 60, again under ideal vehicle and road conditions, unloaded and with an expert driver. The upshot of this is that you're basically saying that it's okay to set a yellow so that drivers have to hover their foot over the brake pedal and be prepared to apply near maximum braking at EVERY intersection they cross. Sorry, that's crap.
Quote:
|
Oh - remember - those red light cameras aren't active until the other light turns green, at least as far as I know. That means you have the 3 second yellow light and another second or two of cross over time before the other side of the intersection turns, so you won't get a ticket.
|
That is so amazingly wrong that I can't believe you even suggested it. Look at every red light camera website on the web. The biggest complaint with red light cameras is that you can get a ticket for crossing the line less than 0.1 seconds after the light turns red. In fact, the trigger is so short that they have photo evidence that shows one light red and the other still yellow on the same tree (the red light was LED and the yellow incandescent.)
Look, I have no problem with ticketing people for actually running legitimate red lights. (And no, I've never had a red light ticket.) In fact, I watched at that same intersection as a woman was flashed for going through the turn signal a full two seconds after the light turned red. (And in that case, she was only going about 15--very brazen.) But study after study has shown that 5 second yellows, plus a 1-second all-red before opposing traffic goes green, reduces accidents far more than cameras do, and that when those requirements are placed in an intersection with a camera, red light tickets go down to the point where cities are starting to remove them because they're no longer profitable.