Say "Cheeeeese!"

Radley Balco over at Reason wrote this post about short yellow lights at traffic signals. The gist is that at signals with cameras to catch traffic violators, the yellows are short. Why have short yellows? According to the link cited in the article (I know, I know its like a treasure hunt) about short lights in Lubbock, TX,

Adding an additional second to the ITE minimum yellow yielded 53% reduction in violations, producing the greatest benefit of all the factors studied (2-6). When safety is the main concern, preventing crashes is more important than reducing violations. Yellow signal timing again proved most effective in reducing crashes. An extra second yielded a 40 percent collision reduction.

Read those numbers again. As a citizens, adding a second to yellow light length reduces expenses by 53% and reduces crashes by 40% (which reduce insurance costs, hospital costs, and lots of other expenses - and oh, yeah SAVES LIVES). One second? That's it? This is fantastic. Seems like there's a citizens initiative in the making, just huge savings all around. Now someone please remind me what the role of government is? Is it to debate safety v. revenue? I've never liked situations where the government views citizens as a source of revenue (which means I'm mostly unhappy), just too big a conflict of interest. But here it looks like citizens pay with fines and injury.

Just for the record, and not surprisingly, I'm totally against traffic cameras.