I would say that 2 things are needed for red light cameras to have a positive impact on safety: (1) they need to be run with that as the goal and (2) everybody needs to know and believe that (1) is true.
A necessary but not sufficient condition is that the vendors must only supply equipment. For example, the camera company sells cameras; the cable company sells cables; the signpost company sells signposts; and so on, possibly up to a systems integration company which puts the pieces together and installs them. The municipality must be responsible for implementing the legal policies by programming the systems.
Next, the policies must support safety. This means fines that progressively increase based on the severity of the offense, and start at nothing at all for events which are just barely an offense. For example, slightly mis-judging a yellow and exiting the intersection 0.1s after the light turns red shouldn’t attract a fine. However, it might make sense for it to attract a warning notice, so the driver knows they were a little over the line. The purpose should be education and compliance after all.
I was about to say that it would be OK for fine revenue to pay for the system itself, but I’m not even sure of that. Whatever the fine revenue is used for, it must be something whose funding situation cannot affect the enforcement system. In the event revenue drops, possibly partially as a result of implementation of the system, there must be no resulting political pressure back on the system to change its behaviour. I’m not sure what this should be, but I wonder if sending the money to the Bank of Canada to be destroyed would work (note: I don’t mean withdrawing it as cash and then burning the cash, because that would be stupid, but simply cancelling the money — the opposite of the money creation that the Bank sometimes does).
Also, I don’t think there is a need to individually sign intersections with red light cameras. If they are properly configured to encourage safe driving, all they are doing is monitoring for illegal behaviour. So a simple way to avoid being fined is to drive legally, as one is already obligated to do. Signs at the border of the municipality advertising the policy and linking to a website that explains the goals and setup of the system would make sense.
A necessary but not sufficient condition is that the vendors must only supply equipment. For example, the camera company sells cameras; the cable company sells cables; the signpost company sells signposts; and so on, possibly up to a systems integration company which puts the pieces together and installs them. The municipality must be responsible for implementing the legal policies by programming the systems.
Next, the policies must support safety. This means fines that progressively increase based on the severity of the offense, and start at nothing at all for events which are just barely an offense. For example, slightly mis-judging a yellow and exiting the intersection 0.1s after the light turns red shouldn’t attract a fine. However, it might make sense for it to attract a warning notice, so the driver knows they were a little over the line. The purpose should be education and compliance after all.
I was about to say that it would be OK for fine revenue to pay for the system itself, but I’m not even sure of that. Whatever the fine revenue is used for, it must be something whose funding situation cannot affect the enforcement system. In the event revenue drops, possibly partially as a result of implementation of the system, there must be no resulting political pressure back on the system to change its behaviour. I’m not sure what this should be, but I wonder if sending the money to the Bank of Canada to be destroyed would work (note: I don’t mean withdrawing it as cash and then burning the cash, because that would be stupid, but simply cancelling the money — the opposite of the money creation that the Bank sometimes does).
Also, I don’t think there is a need to individually sign intersections with red light cameras. If they are properly configured to encourage safe driving, all they are doing is monitoring for illegal behaviour. So a simple way to avoid being fined is to drive legally, as one is already obligated to do. Signs at the border of the municipality advertising the policy and linking to a website that explains the goals and setup of the system would make sense.