So imagine: you're minding your own business, rolling down the street.
When out of nowhere, a bus hits your car.
Leo doesn't have to imagine that.
It happened to him!
[Leo:] "Me and my uncle were just crossing— like we were just making it turn into, like,
these little apartments."
When he says a bus driver ran a red light.
[Leo:] "Then we hit the curb.
The car had just dented in.
Like, my shoulder was, like, in pain.
A lot of my hearing had, like, went out.
And this part of my eye, I can't really see out of it anymore."
You wish there had been a red light camera there.
Do you think it would have made any difference?
[Leo:] "I don't think it would make any difference.
I think he still would have passed it."
Preventative or not, we may never know.
But with no cameras, there's no evidence.
Who ran the red light?
[Leo:] "When he went to court, he still won the case."
Which leaves Leo and his family stuck with the medical bills.
Right-angle ("T-bone") crashes are the second-most dangerous kind of crash.
There's no hood or trunk to protect you.
Just your thin car door.
And these kinds of crashes happen when people run red lights.
Kate in Quebec... (driver gasps)
Tells me she didn't even see this car coming.
[Kate:] "I got to call 9-1-1, okay?"
So engineers, politicians, and even you and
me grab at every tool we can to reduce these kinds of crashes.
One of the tools in the toolbox are red light cameras, which are remarkably controversial.
But no matter how you feel about these, you got to admit the technology that drive them
is pretty cool.
I want to know how these work.
So I decided to ask somebody.
[Ambush interview:] How do red light cameras work?
[Billy:] "I don't know?"
Then I decided to ask somebody who knows something about red light cameras.
(open)
[Dillon:] "I'm Joe Dillon..."
Over his career, Joe installed hundreds of red light cameras.
[Dillon:] "We had systems from the west coast to the east coast."
Hoping to reduce crashes and save lives.
Where did red light cameras come from?
Here in California, if somebody blows through a red light, they could cause a serious T-bone
car crash.
But in New York, the stakes are quite a bit higher.
The crosswalk capital of America!
Since 1899, when the first person got hit by a car.
The walkers and the wheelers have been at war ever since.
[Movies:] "I'm walkin' here!"
By 1980, a person died every day crossing New York City streets.
And you can blame one-third of the deaths on people running red lights.
Typically cab drivers who knew they could blow through 100 red lights and never see
a cop.
[Dillon:] "The industry was approached by police departments who said, 'We have a lot
of people running traffic signals, is there an electronic way to do this.'"
New York's first red light camera program had an officer stand on the corner and pull
a string every time he saw someone run the red.
[Dillon:] "Why do we need to type an officer sitting here?"
So they mounted a video camera on a pole, but somebody still had to watch it.
If the city is paying somebody 8 hours to sit there and watch all that video.
They might as well just pay an officer to be out here in the corner writing tickets
for 8 hours.
For a camera program to work, they had to figure out a way to automate it and make it
work all on its own.
Twenty-four seven.
How does the camera know a driver is running a red light?
Automated cameras are not magical, so we need to feed the computer two pieces of information.
1.
Letting it know a car is approaching and... 2.
That the stop light is red.
[Dillon:] If the light is red and this car is going 12 miles an hour, you're
not likely going to stop.
Here's an example: The computer sees a car traveling over a certain speed while the light
is red.
So, it takes two pictures.
One just before that stop our finish line and one just after.
These are from the scene camera, because they show the car, where the car is, and that the
light is red.
Both, along with a close up of the license plate, get mailed out for the violation.
Detecting motion is really important.
So how does it know if you're moving?
We go back to one of our old friends.
This is a loop detector.
A coil of wire buried in the pavement, charged up with a little bit of electricity.
And your car's metal body messes with that charge acting like a switch.
So, a loop has no way to tell what speeds you're going.
It's kind of like a doorbell.
It senses your car's presence as you cross it.
But if you have two of them and you know the distance between the two, you can run a simple
equation to be able to tell how fast you cross those two loops.
This is a common method engineers can use to determine your speed approaching a red
light camera.
But they could also use a camera-based or radar-based system.
Anything that gives them a vehicle speed.
But drivers do get a heads up.
The amount of warning you get to that site depends on your state.
In this case, here in the San Fernando Valley of California, that would be...
(looking dorky)
75 footsteps.
Which I think is about 75ft.
My feet are pretty close to a foot.
Kind of stingy compared to this one in Tennessee: 800 feet before the intersection.
Now the loops are going to detect every car, even the ones stopping for the red light.
And we don't want the camera taking pictures of those cars.
So, engineers set a cut-off called the "trigger speed."
[Dillon:] "Ten to 15 miles an hour.
And it would vary according to the layout of the road, what the speed limit was."
Drivers stopping for a red light on an expressway are going to register a much faster speed
than people stopping downtown.
[Dillon:] "A high traffic congested area.
You may run the red light at 8 miles an hour.
The trigger speeds could be adjusted up or down."
Especially on a right-turn lane.
You can legally turn right on a red after a complete stop, which a lot of us are pretty
sloppy about.
And that can cause some real problems.
How sensitive should cameras be for people making a right turn on red?
[Dillon:] "Some departments say 'set it at one [MPH].'
If you didn't come to a complete stop, then it would take a picture.
But others said, 'no.
We want to give people compassion,' I guess.
And we had some that we set as high as twelve or 15."
But in any direction...
you can run a camera at zero.
If you drive up to the line and stop below the trigger speed and you get bored midway
through the red light.
So you hit the gas and just go, you'd fool the camera and get away with it.
Obviously.
Don't do this.
Okay, part two, the second bit of information.
Now, the red light camera needs to know when the light bulb is red so it's not taking pictures
during the yellow or during the green.
And inside this traffic controller cabinet is an actual wire with 120 volts that it's
pumping through a conduit up to that green bulb.
So, you wouldn't want to be taking pictures right now.
Yellow, and soon it's going to turn red.
The electricity from the red bulb could be a switch for the computer.
But how do you safely get that electricity?
[Dillon:] "Florida said, 'we don't want you touching any of our wires.'
So we used an inductive loop that was about the size of closing up your thumb and they
would run their wire through this inductive loop."
If you're a car enthusiast, kind of like that clip-on thing of the timing light.
[Dillon:] "It would sense that there's voltage going through this wire and it would arm the
system so we never physically touched it."
Keeping the two systems separate.
That way they don't cause a power surge or something, which is a bigger problem than
you think it might be.
Occasionally, God himself— angry about getting his own red light ticket, would send a message.
[Cosmic voice:] "$363?
C'mon, nobody is perfect!"
[Dillon:] "Lightning would hit a pole.
Now, we grounded them well, but they were just big old lightning rods.
And there were plenty of times we open it up and all you smell is burnt wires and parts."
(I miss the 1990s, when Sizzler was actually good)
And in sunbelt states, it wouldn't even take the bolt of lightning.
[Dillon:] "It's not a problem of cold because they generate their own heat in the winter
and stay warm.
But the biggest problem is heat."
It's sitting up there on the pole all summer long, not just here in California, but hotter
places like Arizona, and humid places like Miami, Florida.
[Dillon:] "You can't afford to put air conditioners
in the boxes that's impractical.
You can use internal fans to move the air, but you can't bring in fresh air because that
brings in moisture.
So these things are sealed tight."
Which makes every piece of equipment a lot more expensive than something you or I would
go buy off the shelf.
[Dillon:] "Everything in there is hardened commercial equipment."
So the type of camera they use really surprised me.
Early red-light systems couldn't use any digital cameras because those didn't exist in the
1980s.
And in the 1990s, the resolution was so poor you couldn't read a license plate.
So these used off-the-shelf SLR cameras!
[Dillon:] "Single-lens reflex cameras that were built by Canon and Nikon, and with motor
drives in it.
They were hooked up to electronically trigger them."
A technician would have to drive out here every day, open the cabinet, change the film.
[Dillon:] "We would actually have to take
it to a local drugstore to get the film processed."
Can you imagine the poor person at the photomat day after day developing pictures of cars
and license plates?
It's like being a sports photographer.
You're trying to snap away at a fast moving subject as it's going by you at 40 or 50 miles
an hour.
[Dillon:] "One camera zoomed in just to get the license plate.
The plate camera was always black and white.
You didn't need the color.
You wanted higher contrast.
"In this millisecond time, you couldn't give the cameras time to focus.
So auto focus on everything was turned off."
Joe says most red light camera setups don't
take pictures of all cars entering the intersection.
Just the most troublesome approaches.
Because each one takes quite a bit of setup.
[Dillon:] "You would spend hours up there on the pole focusing these.
And you'd always focus at night.
If they look good at night and they were focused at night, they're going to be beautiful in
the daylight."
But that means a flash, really big flash.
[Dillon:] Remember the old electronic flashes that you'd hear this whining sound of the...
(imitating flash capacitor)... as it charged back up?"
This is called a flash capacitor.
Imagine the electricity coming off the pole toward the flash as being like a garden hose.
It's constant, it trickles out, but it's not enough to light up the flash.
A flash capacitor is like a bucket.
The garden hose could fill it up, and when you're ready to take the picture, you just
dump all the water out at once.
But where your camera used a little tiny flash capacitor.
These were big enough to kill you.
[Dillon:] "It would take two of us to lift them up on the phone and put them up there.
And then it's giant reflector.
And when it would go off, you would get the whole intersection."
About 20 years ago, digital cameras finally were sharp enough to read license plates.
And red light cameras upgraded from SLRs to DSLRs.
So instead of sending a technician out to collect those images on 35 millimeter rolls
of film, you just transmit the files digitally.
[Dillon:] "The fastest way was cable Internet.
We would give them the address, and they'd say there's no such business there."
Be home between noon and six?
Well, here's the thing.
It's not really a home.
Digital also meant they could add video.
A continuous loop that saves 6 seconds before and after a car runs a red light.
Then all the files whisk away to a central server.
Coincidentally, it's when red light cameras started to take off.
Red light programs grew from dozens to over 500 in the year 2012.
The most ever.
[Dillon:] "It had to be a clear violation."
The red light camera company's processing center are the first people to look at these
photos and the video clips.
[Dillon:] "There's cases where somebody would see the first flash go off and they'd say,
'I don't want a ticket' and they'd lock up
their brakes and fly halfway through the intersection
sideways.
And those violations would be tossed."
After they've weeded out the questionable violations, the good ones get sent to the
local police department.
[Dillon:] "Many cities use retired police officers.
Some would use officers that might be on death duty for an injury.
You could sit there for 6 or 8 hours just looking at violations."
If I worked for the police department, and I have 300 of them to do...
It'd be very tempting to just say "I trust the camera."
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES....
[Dillon:] "The system was built to prevent that.
Because if you didn't view the three pictures and if you didn't view the video in its entirety,
you couldn't approve the tickets."
The good ones then get sent out in the mail.
And that's where the problem starts.
[KTVU:] "A California assemblyman introduced legislation today that would ban red light
traffic cameras statewide."
[KUSA:] "...let voters decided they want to ban red light cameras..."
[WJLA:] "...to introduce a bill to prohibit new cameras starting in July."
I can't help but wonder if a driver is ambivalent about red light cameras or maybe even supports
them...
And then that flash goes off and they get mailed a violation, if that shapes their public
opinion in a negative way.
Since that 2012 peak, fewer American cities are using red light cameras.
Some states, like Texas, have already banned them.
So, why is this happening?
In a second video, let's take a look at red light cameras from a policy perspective.
What can we do to try to soften some of the rough edges that make these cameras unpopular?
Or should cities take the cameras out and use something else?
What other methods do we have to reduce red light running?
Because whether you like the cameras or not, we have the same goal:
Reducing red light crashes.