, I am often having to break hard to avoid running a red with one of those POINT OF NO RETURN YELLOWS that cops WILL pull you over for if you dont time it right.
Speaking of "point of no return" yellows, I'm not sure how it is in your neck of the woods, but here in NYC they've got a nice little racket going on:
Generally, the best way to tell when the light is going to turn yellow is to look at the crosswalk signal for the cross-traffic. It used to be that it would blink "Don't Walk" 8-10 times, then display a
solid "Don't Walk" for a good second and a half to two seconds, and
then the light would turn yellow. The duration of the yellow light was generally 2 seconds. So all in all, you had 3-4 seconds from when the solid "Don't Walk" appeared until the light turned red.
In the last several years, they have either made the solid "Don't Walk"
exactly coincide with the appearance of the yellow light (giving you only the 2 seconds of yellow to react before the light turned red), or -- and this is far more devious --
they don't have a flashing "Don't Walk" at all, it's simply a solid "Don't Walk" the entire time (so you can't gauge when the light will turn yellow and you're uncertain during the 100-foot runup to the light). They've also shortened the duration of the yellow light at many intersections. Oh yeah, here's the best part of this scam: they have red light cameras at many of the locations that they have this solid "Don't Walk" system in place, so you'll be ticketed if you run the red by even a fraction of a second. It's basically a red light trap; no one can tell me that this was not done intentionally, because
all the "Don't Walk" signs in Brooklyn were originally on the 3-4 second delay system, and then several years ago about 80% of them changed for no apparent reason.
I've read studies which demonstrated that the best way to prevent people from running reds is to increase the duration of the yellow light. Instead, they've effectively shortened it. Go figure. They've also put 4-way stops or streetlights on nearly
every corner (literally a 60-80% increase from when I was an early teen), which just makes traffic grind to a halt, since the lights along, say, a residential avenue are
never timed correctly. They try to act like they're putting the lights up at "dangerous intersections," but that's BS, because at most of the intersections on my avenue there hasn't been an accident in over 15 years. Honestly, on my avenue there's a stretch of literally 14 blocks where
every corner has a light -- and this is a two-way,
single-lane, residential avenue where the blocks are literally only 100 feet long. They've also
massively increased the "double-red" times (i.e., the amount of time between one light turning red and the oncoming traffic light turning green), though at least that I can see a reason for in many cases because people like to "anticipate" and jump the light. Still, we're talking a double-red of 6+ seconds many times. Just ridiculous all around. Don't even get me started on driving in NY -- they treat us like sheep, releasing us from one pen (light) and stopping us at the next pen 50 feet down the road. Heaven forfend we should be able to actually
get anywhere in one of the fastest-paced cities on the planet.
