Posted on 12/13/2004 12:15:50 AM PST by weegee
"With Houston being swamped with immigrants, most of them illegal, it's not surprising that their traffic problems are those of a third world country."
Um, I actually like living in Houston, those nasty immigrants and all. Shocking, isn't it? And the traffic is no worse than most cities with over 4 million residents. Actually, I've found that getting around Houston is a whole lot easier than LA, Boston, NY, and Chicago. Just use a map. There are about 10 different routes to every destination.
No they are not all over the place in N.VA
The only red light cameras that I know of are on 28 south of Braddock Road, on 7100 at Pope's Head Road, on 50 at a street whose name I cannot recall right now, and in Alexandria in front of Landmark Mall.
Those cameras you may see on TOP of the lights are not red light cameras. Those are traffic detection cameras and replace the failure-prone loop detector so that the light won't stay green for cars that aren't there or fail to give a green to cars that are.
What do the pressure sensors sense to make the light change, if there's no car around?
They're loop detectors (basically metal detectors), not pressure sensors, and they make the light change because they're damaged and the signal controller is always sensing the presence of a vehicle there.
What really makes me wonder is that most of the time, the agency responsible for the traffic light doesn't fix this problem until someone complains about it. It's like they either have no way of remotely monitoring the signal controller or don't know how to remotely monitor it. Or if they do they have no idea what to look at to determine if there's a problem (Hint: If the controller reports that the loop detector has been detecting a vehicle there continuously for days on end, IT'S PROBABLY BROKEN!)
Interesting new driving phenomenon, courtesy of our recent Latin arrivals; never seen this before last year, and now it's not unusual: while sitting at a red light, the driver decides he's waited long enough. He'll just take off against the red. In one instance for sure, it looked like the guy was showing off for a chica in the next car. No es mas macho to wait for a green light, when you can just go against the red.
Yep. It's always the mexicans, isn't it? In the good old days, nobody ran a red light. Sheesh.
That is, if you don't transport back to 1956 first.
The activity I described is new in this area. I've been driving 20 years and never seen it before. I now see it, at all, and when I do see it, it's Hispanic drivers doing it. Got any more brilliant comments?
So9
"Got any more brilliant comments?"
No. I just can't beat the brilliance of anecdotal nonsense.
Can't beat it for what? What's your end goal here? That which I have seen with my own eyes actually didn't happen? Is that your contention?
We have no right to face an accuser. A policy being unconstitutional means nothing anymore. The courts will never throw it out, because they have contempt for the Constitution. People will happily curl up in their blanket of "safety." They will give away any right for an illusion of safety. It's hopeless even to fight it.
I'm convinced that some people lack a self-preservation instinct.
So your basic premis is that obeying the traffic laws by stopping at traffic lights cause accidents....
The extension of your argument is that removing all lights would solve all problems?
No, the extension of the argument is that adding a traffic light can cause more problems than it solves.
The Virginia Dept. of Transportation even says (somewhere on their website) that increased rear-end collisions are one of those problems, in their answer to the question of "We requested that a traffic light be added in front of our subdivision and the request was turned down. Why?".
So your basic premis is that obeying the traffic laws by stopping at traffic lights cause accidents...
Not at all, I was pointing out that there is a trade in the type of accidents at camera intersections. The more serious t-bone accidents are caused by redlight runners and have been reduced; the rear-enders by inattentive drivers running into law abiding citizens but have increased.
While the number of t-bone accidents are reduced, the rear enders have increased in number. How that would affect insurance rates for the rest of us is still to be determined.
A digital countdown signal might help drivers assess if they should try to go through the light too
I haven't seen that much in Houston by I HAVE witnessed an increasing trend that looked to be quite common when I visited Miami nearly a decade ago...
Someone sits at a stop sign (in a neighborhood) feeding to a larger main road. Say (s)he wants to make a left turn across that road. After waiting at that stop sign "long enough" (30 seconds), the driver will start nosing out into oncoming traffic one lane at a time to FORCE the other drivers to yield to the driver leaving the intersection from the stop sign.
"Rules" are only for the other guy (and since this camera system will no monitor the stop signs, expect this trend to continue and possibly increase).
Machismo is a part of what you discussed (showing off at the light). I've seen something similar in Houston several times where some teens walk across the street challenging oncoming traffic (not running across the road). They'll laugh at their friends who stay behind on the other side of the road because they are wimps.
Expect this inefficient system to remain in place until Houston tears out the boondoggle rail...
Q: The traffic signals downtown are still a joke. They all turn green (or red) at once! On Austin Street, for example, all the lights from south to north in downtown turn green at once. The objective (I suppose) is to go as fast as you can to make as many lights as you can. When are they going to fix this?— David Kester, Houston
A: The traffic signals downtown are synchronized, meaning the lights on north-south and east-west streets change at the same time. This is by design, said Wes Johnson, spokesman for the Department of Public Works and Engineering.
In other parts of the city, public works has been sequencing the traffic signals. Sequenced signals turn green as traffic rolls along the major street, meaning a motorist traveling the set speed (usually the limit or 5 mph under) won't usually have to stop.
The city has agreed with the Metropolitan Transit Authority that the Main Street light rail line is the most important aspect of downtown signal timing. Trains receive priority at intersections and the system is designed so that they should not have to stop between stations. This makes sequencing downtown lights impractical, Johnson said.
He said the massive street repairs downtown since 1998 have disrupted normal traffic patterns, making it difficult to sequence the signals even if MetroRail were not a factor.
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