(Red Light) Running to Stand Still

“And so she woke up/Woke up from where she was/Lying still/Said I gotta do something/About where we’re going” — U2

Does this sound familiar? You’re waiting to cross the street, patiently staring at the solid red LED hand across the road. Maybe you look towards the oncoming traffic on the side street and notice that the flashing red hand has become solid red. Maybe you also notice the opposing traffic signals go from green to yellow. You turn to look back across the street, eagerly anticipating the appearance of the solid white LED stick figure. And then it appears! You step into the street and — WHOOOOSH — a car speeds past, nearly knocking you to the curb. Thankfully you weren’t hurt, and there were no collisions involving any other cars, bikes, or buses. You think to yourself, “just another car running a red light.”

I can’t tell you how many times a day I see cars running red lights. Throughout the greater Los Angeles area — in the busy downtown core, on the West Side, in the San Gabriel Valley, and down to Orange County and San Diego — red light running is something I see many times a day. You probably see it too. And it’s not just in California. I’ve seen it from New England to the Pacific Northwest, and from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes.

Often people who run red lights face no consequences. From my anecdotal research, I’ve personally seen less than a handful of citations issued by public safety personnel for vehicles running red lights or stop signs. If people are lucky enough to avoid a collision when running a red light, and they don’t receive a citation, there are absolutely no consequences to their behavior. So they do it again, and again. Some public agencies have even resorted to pushing the blame for potential injuries onto pedestrians, urging pedestrians to take responsibility for making sure the crossing is clear, even when a car runs a red light!

As the husband of a behavioral psychologist, I’ve learned that the psychology of rule breaking is related to other behavioral aspects. Without any negative consequence, people who break rules are incentivised to do it again, and to break more rules. When thinking “it was just running a red light; it’s no big deal,” someone who runs a red light is rationalizing a decision to break a rule, and is building a foundation to break more rules. Plus, they are minimizing the potential impacts of running a red light, particularly when traveling at speeds over 20mph — if they hit a car or a pedestrian, there could be injuries or fatalities. When people see cars run red lights without a negative consequence, they may also be more inclined to run a red light themselves, and may in fact feel like they are almost entitled to break the same rule.

“Now imagine you just witnessed a testosterone-fueled type cutting in line or tearing through a red light (nearly running over you and the toddler holding your hand). Chances are, you’ll experience a knee-jerk reaction: to get even or at least to level the field. Rules seem especially worth breaking in the name of fairness.”

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201411/are-these-rules-worth-breaking

So why do I care? Do “minor” occurrences of breaking the rules lead to bigger safety problems? In my professional opinion, bolstered by the input of a licensed behavioral psychologist, the instances of running red lights — or any other willful acts of ignoring traffic laws — can and does lead to bigger safety problems. Here are some facts supporting this opinion:

1. There are nearly 40,000 traffic fatalities per year in the US, and the number of traffic fatalities has been steadily increasing for the past two years.
2. Nearly 90% of all collisions are attributed to “human error” — another way to read this is that people aren’t correctly following traffic laws — whether willfully or inadvertently.
3. The three main contributing factors to traffic fatalities are “belts, booze, and speed” — all of which are directly related to human behavior and personal choice.
4. The National Transportation Safety Board is issuing new recommendations to reduce speeds across the country, in recognition of the severe public health epidemic caused by people willfully exceeding posted speed limits, resulting in an ever increasing number of traffic-related fatalities.

So what can we do to address this? Thinking back to behavioral psychology, the only effective way to get people to not willfully break rules is to ensure that there are negative consequences for even minor rule breaking. As an example, think about how a person trains a pet dog to go outside to pee. When the young puppy is first being trained, the puppy will often urinate wherever they feel like — usually your very clean living room rug or something similar. How do you train the dog not to do this? You have to immediately catch the dog in the act — or right about to start the act — and then provide some direct discipline. From my experience, that usually means first putting the dog’s nose in the puddle of pee while loudly saying “no,” and then taking the dog outside immediately to finish.

From a traffic safety perspective, this means we would need immediate negative consequences when “minor” traffic rules are broken. In California we’ve had mixed experience with automated red light photo enforcement, with a lot of pushback coming from people who fear “government overreach” or worse. Unfortunately this pushback has meant that the tickets issued by red light photo enforcement cameras are not often enforced. States like Arizona have deployed automated speed enforcement cameras, and have had very similar experiences as the red light photo enforcement cameras in California. Although these automated enforcement technologies directly address the safety concerns related to red light running and the willful breaking of traffic rules, perhaps it is not the worst thing that they are not widely supported, since these techniques are not providing direct and immediate negative consequences for rule breaking.

What I would prefer to see is a greater focus on enforcement of all traffic rules. With the rapid expansion of connectivity between vehicles and in-vehicle equipment, we aren’t far from a future where a citation is immediately issued by the car itself. To get there, agencies need to take a “broken windows” approach to traffic laws. However, in another unfortunate turn of events, recent legislation in California to authorize automated speed enforcement cameras was opposed by the California Association of Highway Patrolmen — the same public safety officers we rely on to issue citations when people break the rules.

What a predicament to be stuck in — the only way to change these unsafe behaviors is to ensure there are immediate and direct negative consequences for breaking the rules, and the public safety personnel we rely on oppose automation. In my opinion, this isn’t a problem, it is an opportunity. We rely on public safety personnel to keep us safe and fight crime. Having our police and other sworn public safety officers spend their time watching for people running red lights is not the best way to fight crime — I’d prefer they focus on catching murderers and other actual criminals. Cities in California like West Hollywood have found better ways to address this, and they have an innovative program for issuing red light running tickets using a team of two people — parking enforcement officers — to stand on street corners and issue tickets.

Our government agencies are currently scrambling to address a rapidly changing transportation system. Connected and autonomous vehicles are imminent (some might say already here), and people are seeking more choices in how and when they get around. Agencies across the world are adopting plans to reduce vehicle speeds and reduce traffic fatalities — to a mixed effect. So we are at a rare point in time where we can muster the political support, and then financial support, to make some positive changes for the safety of the travelling public. Cities like Denver, Colorado seem to understand this — Denver’s Vision Zero Action Plan recommends some bold actions to reduce traffic-related roadway fatalities, including training public safety staff to focus on those traffic violations that could result in the most harm and expanding automated enforcement.

I therefore recommend the following three guiding principles to address what I see as a pervasive problem in our transportation systems:

1. Aggressively enforce all traffic regulations, particularly those with the greatest potential of causing a fatality (e.g., red light running, speeding).
2. Use available technology to provide “instant” consequences when rules are broken — camera, image processing, and communication technologies have advanced to the point that they can be deployed on mobile and fixed objects, at lower and lower costs every day.
3. Use non-public safety personnel to issue immediate citations — imagine if all City vehicles had the capability to monitor traffic conditions and issue citations, like a bus issuing a ticket to a driver that runs a red light in front of it.

In closing, I hope that this post highlights what I believe is one of the most significant problems in transportation safety. It is my opinion that the behavior of ignoring “minor” traffic rules is a significant contributing factor to the growing numbers of annual fatalities, and probably the main barrier to the success of programs like Vision Zero and comprehensive speed reductions. If we don’t address this most fundamental problem, we won’t be happy where we go, because we won’t be going in a positive direction.