by TheNewspaper.com
Richland Hills, Texas covers up yellow light manipulation by falsifying official signal timing documents.
Officials in Richland Hills, Texas have manipulated the yellow signal timing at the city's lone red light camera monitored intersection. By slicing the amount of warning time available to motorists from 3.6 seconds to 3.0 seconds for several months, the intersection of Glenview Drive and Booth Calloway Road generated an estimated $300,000 in extra photo ticket revenue. Richland Hills Police Chief Barbara Childress admitted that she ordered a private contractor to shorten the yellow signal time.
"I had actually reduced the time," Childress admitted to KDFW television.
Childress' account of why and when this change was made, however, was inconsistent with the facts. She first claimed that the "speed up" effect of the MPEG compression used with Redflex online violation videos confused her, leading to an unfortunate order to shorten the signal timing below the minimum standard established by the Texas Department of Transportation. MPEG video compression does not speed up videos. Second, city documents assert that the signal timing had only been shortened during a thirteen day period in August (view documents in a 520k PDF file), evidence provided to KDFW television proved otherwise. Violation videos from June 9, July 28 and a motorist's videotape of the intersection from August 11 and 14 documented that the signal was providing just 3.0 seconds of yellow, as opposed to the 3.6 seconds provided before the ticket cameras were activated.
Read the rest of the article HERE.
12/27/2007
City Caught Manipulating Yellow Time for Big Profit
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Seems like this is protocol whenever these red light cameras get installed. I was recently in Houston when I sped up during a yellow light, it turned red just as I reached the intersection and then POP POP- 2 flashes of light from the cameras. No doubt the yellow time was shorter because this doesn't happen to me in Austin!! Fortunately since those particular cameras were newly installed and in beta testing, I just received a warning ticket in the mail. *The incident occured @ SW Frwy (US-59) access road near Sugar Land.
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