Cameras credited with cutting crashes

Say what you will about those ruthless robot red-light cameras that send you $50 traffic tickets with photographic proof that your car ran a red light.

New numbers in Raleigh say that, thanks to red-light cameras installed at 11 bad intersections five years ago, we're sending fewer people to the hospital these days.

Right-angle "T-bone" crashes have fallen by 83 percent at the intersections since 2003, when Raleigh installed cameras to catch drivers who run red lights there.

The crash count fell from 337 in the four years before cameras to 58 in the four years after.

"The numbers we're looking at here in Raleigh show an increase in safety at the intersections where we've installed them," said Jed Niffenegger, a senior transportation engineer who oversees Raleigh's cameras.

That's a steep drop in one of the worst kinds of crashes that happen when cars collide at intersections. A driver has a green light, another runs a red light -- and one gets hit broadside.

Some critics have said that red-light cameras actually cause more crashes.

A national, seven-city study of red-light cameras in 2004 found a 15 percent increase in rear-end collisions, along with a 25 percent drop in T-bone crashes. The overall numbers were higher for rear-enders, so the combined number of rear-end and right-angle crashes stayed about the same.

But rear-enders cause less damage and far fewer injuries, said Forrest Council, a senior researcher at the UNC Highway Safety Research Center in Chapel Hill, who took part in the national study. Researchers saw a healthy drop in crash injuries.

"If you get hit in an angle crash on the driver side, you can actually get hit by [your own] car buckling in on you," Council said. "It's much more severe than a rear-end crash."

When green lights turn yellow at intersections where cameras are installed, drivers are a bit more likely to hit the brakes to avoid getting ticketed for running a red light. So they're more likely to get smacked from behind by somebody tailgating them.

Niffenegger did not have complete local numbers on rear-end wrecks, but he said it appeared that eight of Raleigh's camera intersections had about two more rear-enders per year than they did before the cameras were installed. Other intersections did not show an increase.

Raleigh has focused its red-light cameras on busy intersections where there were many T-bone crashes in the past. Niffenegger considers the program successful for reducing serious crashes, even with the increase in rear-enders.

"Usually that's a trade-off we're willing to live with, because of the severity of those angle crashes," he said.

Raleigh's camera program, called Safelight, has issued more than 89,000 tickets since 2003. The $50 violation does not affect a driver's traffic record or insurance costs.

Most of the proceeds from ticket payments go to the company that handles the cameras, with a modest amount forwarded to the Wake County schools. Affiliated Computer Services Inc., based in Dallas, this month won a three-year contract to manage Raleigh's Safelight program for $795,000 a year.