Last week, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety published findings that red-light-running violations had declined at intersections with the cameras in Arlington, Va, reports a story in today’s Wall Street Journal.
The study is consistent with other studiesshowing that the cameras make intersections safer, said Anne T. McCartt, co-author of the report and senior vice president for research at IIHS, which is funded by the insurance industry.
“But other researchers question the use of violations as a measure of safety. ‘As soon as you hear them talk about violation rates, these people are trying to obfuscate the fact that accidents don’t go down,’ said Declan O’Scanlon, a New Jersey state assemblyman and an opponent of the cameras.
“’It is meaningless to study violations,’ Barbara Langland Orban, an associate professor of health policy and management at the University of South Florida, wrote in an email. Continue reading “Do red lights reduce accidents?”