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What's going on with people! RTR's - "Run Through Reds"


sheryl
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I saw it once.  Then I saw it again and again and again with increasing frequency.   What the heck!????????????!!!!!!

 

It is so dangerous.  Do people not care that they are "risking" run in to someone?  Anyone?  How about if the table was turned (Heaven forbid) and someone RTR in to their wife, husband, dd, ds, niece, Mom, Dad, nephew, inlaws, etc?

 

I hated the cameras b/c they were so big brotherish but now it seems like society actually "needs" them for protection. 

 

Have you seen any RTR's?  I don't know if that's what they're called.  It's a phrase I coined earlier this year. 

 

Even if 1 person is killed this way, it's at a great expense. What will it take to change this madness?  Is it a numbers game?  After so many accidents/deaths, then changes?

 

 

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I'm sure I would be dead if not for a newly installed camera heading out of the shopping center dh works in. It had been installed a few days prior to our incident. We were leaving the shopping center around 9 at night. I had a green to turn left, it had been green for awhile. As I'm approaching the intersection the darn flashes from the camera alert me that someone is going too fast. The camera is set up to go off before they enter the intersection if movement is detected. Then it goes off 2 more times, them crossing the line, and them being completely over the line. At the first flash I slammed on my brakes without even seeing the car that was running the light. A slip second later the car zoomed passed missing my car by a tiny bit. Had I not stopped he would have slammed right into me directly.

 

Dh saw the whole thing from the passenger seat. He started to react to alert me at the same time the flash went off. I didn't hear anything he said. The flash was enough to alert me. Had it not been there I would not have reacted to dh's words fast enough

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My husband completed a California right turn after he was supposed to (took too long) and got a misdemeanor fine of $500. He went to the traffic courts and had the fine reduced. Plenty of people there paying fines ran the red light and had been ticketed more than once.

 

We are 1 mile from the assigned school and not supposed to have a school bus. The school district supplied a school bus after a crossing guard was nearly knocked down by cars running the red lights and another crossing guard was nearly knocked down at a crosswalk because a car just speed up instead of stopping.

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I remember driving in Chicago and people blowing the horn at me because I didn't gun it at the second the light turned green. I was taught to look both ways when the light turned green and then proceed across the intersection because someone might be running the red light. (A process that takes seconds and for which I have never had the horn blown at me at home). My southern sensibilities were most offended by the Chicago drivers blowing the horn at me! (A couple of times on a brief drive to the airport from downtown.).

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When my girls get their learners permit to drive, after they get the Big Speech about our zero tolerance policy and consequences for texting or other device use while driving, the very first thing they learn is to NEVER asssume that any other driver is actually following traffic laws, especially red lights at intersections. We always look to see if someone appears to be running a red light, and sadly, we're rarely wrong

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You mean turning right on the red light? That's legal in California.

He finished the turn too late. So he was too slow completing the California right turn but the oncoming traffic was beating the red light so a ticket was not as bad as being hit by speeding cars.

 

His fine was reduced by half for turning up in traffic court. Many of his colleagues have traffic tickets too and they can take paid time off to go traffic court because it’s so common. Plenty of active red light cameras in Alameda County.

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RTR's are epidemic in my town. Every single light almost every single time someone runs it, I am not kidding.  I get honked at because I don't run red lights.  This is in Tennessee, the South where people are supposed to be polite.  I blame it on the crazy growth and all the other transplants (like me) who were never taught manners.  It's not right that I have to look both ways before going on a green light or that you have to weave around cars in the intersection because they went but then get stuck due to the crazy traffic.

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25 years ago, my mil would challenge herself to see how many lights she could before church on Sunday. she attended 7 am mass. I think her record was 7. She did quit when she moved-- I think because she could walk to mass in the new city.

 

Later she moved again. She found that she was getting a significant number of speed camera tickets ( she was done running red lights at this point). She had huge fines to pay. She told me she thought the cameras were good. She knew many people hated them and said they were bad. However , mil said she broke the law and the camera accomplished exactly what it was supposed to do. It got her to slow down she said she would not have gotten all those tickets if she hadn't been speeding so it was her fault not the camera.

 

Anyway mil is no longer running lights and she drives slower. She also drives less and does not drive at night. She's 85.

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I remember driving in Chicago and people blowing the horn at me because I didn't gun it at the second the light turned green. I was taught to look both ways when the light turned green and then proceed across the intersection because someone might be running the red light. (A process that takes seconds and for which I have never had the horn blown at me at home). My southern sensibilities were most offended by the Chicago drivers blowing the horn at me! (A couple of times on a brief drive to the airport from downtown.).

 

I would not recommend driving in Boston.  :D

 

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My dad's mother was killed and my dad had lifelong spinal injuries because someone ran a read light into his car

 

This is terrible - so sorry to hear about this horrific act.

 

 

 

To a pp - I'm referring to the city.  It is so incredibly common it's ridiculous.  I think it's incredibly arrogant (to think nothing bad will happen), irresponsible and unlawful.  Bring back the cameras, I say - at least at some of the major intersections/hot spots.

 

The country should be different. However and with that said, the country is where a lot of people "make up" driving time.  I've driven many, many roads in my home state of Ohio.  If one was not familiar with the area, you could easily happen upon a sign.

 

Mostly, I'm referring to lights.  I'll be driving along in traffic and getting ready to stop. The light turned red.  I hear an engine in a nearby car start to "rev" up and off they speed right THROUGH the RED LIGHT (RUN THROUGH RED). 

 

My daughter has been driving for 3 years.  She is a good driver.  DH and I have instructed her to not only "wait" now before proceeding on a green light but to give it an extra bit of time, all the while looking not only at the first car in both "right angle" lanes but look several cars down to your right and left to see if anybody is foolish enough to do just exactly what we're discussing - rtr. 

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I started seeing this in my state a year or two ago.  Not exactly running through a red that has been solid red already, but running through after the light has just changed from yellow to red, and they still go after it has just turned red.  I see this all the time now and I never used to.  Are people in more of a hurry?  I don't get it.

 

 

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I would not recommend driving in Boston. :D

 

Yes! I was horrified by the drivers in Boston although I didn't drive in Boston. When walking, I observed craziness but also observed drivers screeching to a halt if I even pretended to think about crossing the street anywhere near a pedestrian crossing. I drove from the airport north to NH, and found people very polite. :)

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We started seeing it when the last wave of people from NYC moved in. Its not beating the yellow, its being half a block back and barrelling thru full speed. We taught our teens to look both ways after light turned green and don't put the vehicle in motion until cross traffic had stopped. Traffic court is doing a lot of business these days ...seems like this is just a way of life to these drivers as it is in other countries. I don't think it will stop even if roundabouts are put in, they will barrel thru.

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This is why I have drilled "Never go on a green!" into dd's head for years. In other words, even if your traffic signal turns green, do a quick head check to be sure traffic moving in the cross direction is stopped/stopping. When she first started driving, she would get to a light and say, "I know! I know! Never go on a green!" I hope it is a habit that sticks with her for a lifetime, as that one extra second could save her life.

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I have seen a lot of people blow through stop signs right in front of me (not slowing down in the least) in the past couple of years. More than ever before. Once I almost got broadsided while turning left at a 4-way stop and the car coming at me didn't stop. I sensed he was going too fast to stop, so I paused before making my turn (I was already in the intersection) and that pause saved my son's life. Now, I don't trust anyone on the roads. I don't assume people with their turn signal on are actually going to turn (seen too many of those) I don't assume anyone is going to actually stop at a stop sign (seen too many people blow right through stop signs) and I slow waaaay down at uncontrolled intersections and even at two-way stops, I slow down, even if I don't have to stop.

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There's a stop sign in our neighborhood that people blow through all the time, and they are moving very fast when they get to it.  I haven't seen any accidents yet, but I'm sure it will happen eventually. 

 

The running of the reds?  I see that all the time in our city.  It didn't used to be that way here, but we have had a large influx of people from Chicago in the past 10-15 years, and they brought that particular habit with them.  

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It's happening here, too. It seems to be a myriad of things: 

 

1. There are more people on the road,

2. there are more distractions in the car, in general (radio, kids, phones, etc.),

3. there are increased attention-getting distractions outside the car (billboards, blinking signs, sign twirling people),

4. there are more lights due to more commercial build-up (which can affect road flow, in concert with #2-3 above),

5. there DOES seem to be a "more in a hurry" frame of mind these days, because -

6. there are A LOT of over-scheduled people rushing around to do all of their things, and 

7. there are social norms evolving that people truly DO feel more "self-important" and thus, justified. 

 

And, around here, the roads are congested because infrastructure hasn't kept up with growth. Add to that the fact that people around me tend to keep the same working hours as each other (standard 9-5) and that many people average a 45-90 minute commute one-way ... it's like everyone is on the road at the same time - heading to work, heading home from work, running errands. They're tired of the grind, the drive, the congestion, and they try to minimize their sits at reds. And it's really sad that all of that takes a "back seat" to how dangerous it is to run through an intersection. 

 

When one of my sons still had his permit, he did hit the brakes upon coming to a red. We have ABS and he locked them, causing us to skid into another car. The police officer who responded to the accident suggested we teach all of our teen drivers how to use the ABS (it hadn't occurred to us before that), and suggested that if it was a close call ... like on a short or missed yellow where stopping would be as dangerous as maintaining speed ... to reduce speed, and continuously honk our way through a red intersection. I ran that by my insurance agent who said that the officer was correct in terms of how to run a red as safely as possible but that the right move was to avoid running a red at all - even if it meant braking hard at that red.

 

My town has cameras at red lights. My county ... I don't know if they said it was unconstitutional, or if it was something else, but for some reason the county I live in doesn't enforce ticketing. Anyone who is caught on camera is sent a ticket, but payment of the ticket isn't enforced. The only inconvenience is that registration can't be renewed online, it must be done in person (I guess so that the office can manually override the "unpaid" ticket from the red light camera.)

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My town has been eliminating a lot of our stop-sign intersections by installing roundabouts.

 

And some of our neighborhood stop signs are becoming yield signs.

 

I wonder how this will impact traffic patterns.

When the roundabouts started popping up around here, many people shook their heads and assumed they would cause more accidents because of the new patterns people had to learn. Now that they have been here for a few years, I think most folks (myself included) love them because they keep traffic moving in many places where it used to back up and stand still. I still switch on my turn signal at the roundabout at the end of the street where I grew up, though. (Used to be a stop. Hard habit to break!)

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In our city DH and I call it the "three car rule". It seems like there's always 3 cars that go after their light turns red. Especially turning left. You have to wait when you get a green because there is still at least one car left coming through. I've been honked at for stopping at the line because the light turns red while I'm still behind it, but most people here would still go anyway. I've had a light turn yellow on me before I'm even able to go on my green because of the other direction still going. It's highly frustrating and I hate driving anywhere on evenings and weekends. I prefer to go out during the day or late at night when there's less traffic. 

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I would just say there’s more distracted driving. It’s up there with people who don’t pull over for first responders or the dump truck that almost ran my husband over when he was directing traffic since the road was closed due to an accident. With his squad behind him. With the lights flashing and his reflective vest on. Good thing he has good reflexes and the dump truck had good brakes.

 

I don’t think red light cameras will fix it, tbh. Some people are going to have to start paying attention to what they’re doing whilst behind the wheel of their vehicle.

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