The Newspaper.com reports that the Los Angeles, California city council yesterday voted 9-3 to extend a red light camera contract for ninety days despite mounting concerns over the program’s safety and cost effectiveness.
Safer Streets LA challenged the accuracy of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) claims that photo enforcement has reduced accidents (view report), and several councilmen expressed interest in following up on the group’s recommendation that amber signal durations be extended by a second to improve intersection safety.
“Are there other intersections that might benefit from improved engineering and infrastructure that could also prevent fatalities and bad collisions — I would like to see more comparisons,” Councilwoman Janice Hahn said.
Most of the council members were dissatisfied with city staff for failing to provide context for accident reduction claims at monitored intersections. Many wanted to know which intersections in the city had the worst problem with accidents and wondered why those locations were not the ones with cameras. Sound familiar Winnipeg?
Although LAPD Sergeant Matthew MacWillie did not have the data requested, he emphasized several times that the thirty-two red light camera intersections experienced no fatalities after cameras were installed.
“There were no fatalities at 4536 other signalized intersections during the same period of time,” Safer Streets Executive Director Jay Beeber countered. “Those fatalities do not cluster at the same intersections year after year after year — so you’re not going to find an intersection that had a fatality and have it year-after-year unless you have an engineering problem… As far as the top-ten locations of where we have a problem, I’ve got a list right here, and these are because the signal timing is not appropriate.”
