Some yellow lights will yield more time for Missouri drivers

It would be interesting to know what the yellow light timings are now before the changes are made. If someone gets that data, I hope you will post it.

Someone else had mentioned that in one country (maybe China?) that the yellow light actually has a countdown timer in it that displays how many seconds until it goes to red (i.e. 5,4,3,2,1). I think this is a fantastic idea and would go a looooong way towards stopping red-light violations.

Of course doing this will cost money and not generate the hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that red-light cameras now do......

NP

There were a few busy intersections that used "all red" for 2 seconds. I liked that idea. It gave the left hand turners a chance to clear the intersection.

...and good news too.

Lengthing yellow timing is a more direct path to safety. It directly gives people more time to stop.

With redlight cameras you HOPE you influence driver behavior and you HOPE that change in behavior influences safety - a more indirect path to safety through two variables.

I guess you could say that redlight camers assume that the majority of redlight violations are a "behavioral" problem and not a automobile/driver performace/judgement issue.

That is an inherent flaw in RLC cameras. They attack the problem as a "behavioral" problem. It is not.

After all, when the yellow light timing increases (and people are given a longer opportunity to stop) RLC violations seem to decrease dramatically - to the ire of the RLC operators. That infers that people on the whole are trying to stop before the light turns red.

This says, to me at least, that redlight running is primarily automobile/driver performance/judgement issue and not a "behavioral" problem.

Applying the right tool to the problem is a big step forward.

I'm not sure about China, but I did read somewhere that Japan is using the countdown timers.

It would really be nice if they used them on roads where the speed limit is 55 MPH. It would also be nice if they didn't play with the timing. We have one road with a 55 MPH speed limit I use quite often and you never know what the timing is going to be. You can see this light for probably a half mile from either direction and one time it will go to green and in less then ten seconds it will switch back to red, the next time it will stay on green for a good two minutes. I know it's nothing to do with sensors because it's done it with no cross traffic setting at the lights.

In Philadelphia, PA they use the count down timers for the walk signals, great for a pedestrian needing to know how much time they have to cross but it's like the start of a race for the drivers ... 3 2 1 GO ......
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I like the walk timers. You can use them to get an idea when the light is going yellow. But as you indicate they are also used by some as the "GO" signal to jump the light.