PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

University of Tennessee professors study dilemmas in sustaining red light camera programs

2013-08-14
(Press-News.org) It's a common driving predicament: As you approach the intersection, the light is yellow. Do you hit the brakes or face a red light camera fine?

Some municipalities engineer their traffic signals to force drivers into this situation in an effort to generate revenue from the cameras.

Professors at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have analyzed this issue to determine if traffic control measures intended to boost red light revenue—such as shortening yellow light time or increasing the speed limit on a street—compromise safety.

The study by professors Lee Han, Chris Cherry and Qiang Yang in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department is published in this month's issue of Transport Policy journal.

Most municipalities acquire their red light camera systems through private vendors and pay for them either through a monthly flat rate or a portion of citations. Thus, the more successful red light programs are at improving safety by decreasing red light running, the less profitable they become. This creates a predicament for traffic engineers—meet financial guarantees to sustain the programs, or increase safety?

"Traffic engineers are facing an ethical dilemma of balancing revenue generation to sustain their red light camera programs with their traffic safety and efficiency goals," said Han. "This is a new conundrum for them."

The authors analyzed prior research related to four traffic signal measures—shortening yellow duration and/or lengthening all-red duration, shortening cycle length, increasing the speed limit and increasing high volume-to-capacity conditions such as with an unwarranted turn signal—and their impacts on red light running, safety and efficiency.

Among their findings:

Shortening the yellow and/or lengthening the all-red, shortening the cycle length, and increasing the speed limit increased the chance of drivers running a red light. Shortening the yellow and increasing the speed limit increased the chance of a crash. Shortening the yellow and/or lengthening the all-red and increasing the speed limit did not impact efficiency of traffic flow. Increasing high volume-to-capacity conditions increased the chances of traffic congestion at a signal but not the chances of running a red light or crashing.

According to the researchers, within the bounds of engineering design standards, there is room for traffic engineers to apply their judgment and develop the best signal-timing strategy. They note that while each strategy has its merits and faults, a combination of the strategies could possibly produce adequate revenue without causing traffic delays or congestion.

"One of the major challenges with implementing red light camera policy is the conflict of matching incentives of tangible revenue for industry and the municipality contrasted with external cost savings such as safety and congestion the value of which is not easily captured," said Cherry. "We hope the public sector and the public use our research to reflect on the motivations for changing signal operations."



INFORMATION:



This research was supported by funding from the Civil and Environmental Engineering department and Southeastern Transportation Center at UT. To read the complete article, visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2013.06.006.



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

AGU journal highlights -- Aug. 13, 2013

2013-08-14
The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth (JGR-B) and Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres (JGR-D). In this release: 1. An earthquake in Japan caused large waves in Norwegian fjords 2. Disposal of Marcellus Shale fracking waste caused earthquakes in Ohio 3. The Arctic is especially sensitive to black carbon emissions from within the region 4. A new metric to help understand Amazon rainforest precipitation 5. Detailed analysis shows ...

Women still less likely to commit corporate fraud

2013-08-14
Women are less likely to take part in corporate crime and fraud even though more women now work in corporations and serve at higher levels of those organizations, according to a team of sociologists. The researchers examined a database of recent corporate frauds and found that women typically were not part of the conspiracy. When women did play a role, it was rarely a significant one. "There has been this view for awhile that women are no more moral than men and that once there was more gender equality in the workforce, there would be more females involved in corporate ...

Disney Researchers use automated analysis to find weakness in soccer coaching strategy

2013-08-14
Investigators at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, are applying artificial intelligence to the analysis of professional soccer and, in one application of the automated technique, have discovered a strategic error often made by coaches of visiting teams. The common wisdom that teams should "win at home and draw away" has encouraged coaches to play less aggressively when their teams are on the road, said Patrick Lucey, a Disney researcher who specializes in automatically measuring human behavior. Yet the computer analysis suggests that it is this defensive-oriented strategy, ...

Toxicologist says NAS panel 'misled the world' when adopting radiation exposure guidelines

2013-08-14
AMHERST, Mass. – In two recently published peer-reviewed articles, toxicologist Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts Amherst describes how regulators came to adopt the linear no threshold (LNT) dose-response approach to ionizing radiation exposure in the 1950s, which was later generalized to chemical carcinogen risk assessment. He also offers further evidence to support his earlier assertions that two geneticists deliberately suppressed evidence to prevent the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) from considering an alternative, threshold model, for ...

Researchers slow light to a crawl in liquid crystal matrix

2013-08-14
WASHINGTON, Aug. 13, 2013—Light traveling in a vacuum is the Universe's ultimate speed demon, racing along at approximately 300,000 kilometers per second. Now scientists have found an effective new way to put a speed bump in light's path. Reported today in The Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express, researchers from France and China embedded dye molecules in a liquid crystal matrix to throttle the group velocity of light back to less than one billionth of its top speed. The team says the ability to slow light in this manner may one day lead to new technologies ...

ORNL finding goes beyond surface of oxide films

2013-08-14
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Aug. 13, 2013 – Better batteries, catalysts, electronic information storage and processing devices are among potential benefits of an unexpected discovery made by Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists using samples isolated from the atmosphere. Researchers at the Department of Energy lab learned that key surface properties of complex oxide films are unaffected by reduced levels of oxygen during fabrication – an unanticipated finding with possible implications for the design of functional complex oxides used in a variety of consumer products, said ...

Even for cows, less can be more

2013-08-14
URBANA, Ill. – With little research on how nutrition affects reproductive performance in dairy cows, it is generally believed that a cow needs a higher energy intake before calving. Research by University of Illinois scientists challenges this accepted wisdom. Animal sciences researcher Phil Cardoso said that this line of research was the result of an "accident." Students in animal sciences professor James Drackley's group compared cows fed before calving with diets containing the recommended energy levels to cows fed reduced energy diets. They found that the cows fed ...

UCSB anthropologists study testosterone spikes in non-competitive activities

2013-08-14
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The everyday physical activities of an isolated group of forager-farmers in central Bolivia are providing valuable information about how industrialization and its associated modern amenities may impact health and wellness. Studying short-term spikes in the testosterone levels of Tsimane men, UC Santa Barbara anthropologists Ben Trumble and Michael Gurven have found that the act of chopping down trees –– a physically demanding task that is critical to successful farming and food production –– results in greater increases in testosterone than ...

Prostate cancer screening: New data support watchful waiting

2013-08-14
PHILADELPHIA —Prostate cancer aggressiveness may be established when the tumor is formed and not alter with time, according to a study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Researchers found that after the introduction of widespread prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening, the proportion of patients diagnosed with advanced-stage cancers dropped by more than six-fold in 22 years, but the proportion diagnosed with high Gleason grade cancers did not change substantially. This suggests that low-grade prostate cancers do ...

Baby corals pass the acid test

2013-08-13
Corals can survive the early stages of their development even under the tough conditions that rising carbon emissions will impose on them says a new study from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. Globally, ocean acidification remains a major concern and scientists say it could have severe consequences for the health of adult corals, however, the evidence for negative effects on the early life stages of corals is less clear cut. Dr Andrew Baird, Principal Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University, ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Multi-resistance in bacteria predicted by AI model

Tinker Tots: A citizen science project to explore ethical dilemmas in embryo selection

Sensing sickness

Cost to build multifamily housing in California more than twice as high as in Texas

Program takes aim at drinking, unsafe sex, and sexual assault on college campuses

Inability to pay for healthcare reaches record high in U.S.

Science ‘storytelling’ urgently needed amid climate and biodiversity crisis

KAIST Develops Retinal Therapy to Restore Lost Vision​

Adipocyte-hepatocyte signaling mechanism uncovered in endoplasmic reticulum stress response

Mammals were adapting from life in the trees to living on the ground before dinosaur-killing asteroid

Low LDL cholesterol levels linked to reduced risk of dementia

Thickening of the eye’s retina associated with greater risk and severity of postoperative delirium in older patients

Almost one in ten people surveyed report having been harmed by the NHS in the last three years

Enhancing light control with complex frequency excitations

New research finds novel drug target for acute myeloid leukemia, bringing hope for cancer patients

New insight into factors associated with a common disease among dogs and humans

Illuminating single atoms for sustainable propylene production

New study finds Rocky Mountain snow contamination

Study examines lactation in critically ill patients

UVA Engineering Dean Jennifer West earns AIMBE’s 2025 Pierre Galletti Award

Doubling down on metasurfaces

New Cedars-Sinai study shows how specialized diet can improve gut disorders

Making moves and hitting the breaks: Owl journeys surprise researchers in western Montana

PKU Scientists simulate the origin and evolution of the North Atlantic Oscillation

ICRAFT breakthrough: Unlocking A20’s dual role in cancer immunotherapy

How VR technology is changing the game for Alzheimer’s disease

A borrowed bacterial gene allowed some marine diatoms to live on a seaweed diet

Balance between two competing nerve proteins deters symptoms of autism in mice

Use of antifungals in agriculture may increase resistance in an infectious yeast

Awareness grows of cancer risk from alcohol consumption, survey finds

[Press-News.org] University of Tennessee professors study dilemmas in sustaining red light camera programs