CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh

Safety drive aims to put brakes on the amber gamblers

(4 posts)
  • Started 13 years ago by Arellcat
  • Latest reply from wingpig

  1. Arellcat
    Moderator

    EEN 14 Feb 2011
    http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/edinburgh/Safety-drive-aims-to-put.6717856.jp

    "DRIVERS in the Capital running red lights are being targeted in a new crackdown as figures reveal thousands have been hit with fines and penalty points on their licences.

    More than 4000 drivers were caught by cameras last year in Edinburgh alone, the majority receiving both £60 penalties and three points on their licence."

    Naturally, it had moved to cyclist-bashing within the first comment, but at least Ladon helped to steer it back to motorists. Interesting thoughts about the amber phase being too short; I recall that Tom Vanderbilt discussed why lengthening the phase tended to increase the risk for everyone (but I'll need to look it up for the details).

    Posted 13 years ago #

  2. chdot
    Admin

    "Interesting thoughts about the amber phase being too short"

    It's certainly the case that some sets of lights seem to have phases that increase the potential for 'conflict' when vehicles keep going through amber and other lights change (e.g. Queen Street).

    Posted 13 years ago #

  3. Dave
    Member

    Genius comment:

    "It's obvious even to me that the problem is the timing of the lights.

    If the time between amber and red was increased to 5 minutes these unfortunate accidents could be avoided."

    I notice at the bottom of Leith Walk (riding or driving into town from Constitution St) that you have to be careful not to drive off when your light goes green, because more often than not there are still a couple of cars from Great Jct St to whizz past. In that case it would seem that their light should turn red earlier (i.e. delay the cross traffic going) although a red light camera wouldn't hurt.

    I also see a lot of vehicles illegally turning right from Constitution -> Great Jct, right through the green phase of the pedestrian crossing.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  4. wingpig
    Member

    If people waiting behind a red can see the perpendicular stream's lights (and think they know the sequence) they sometimes release the handbrake/rev up/spool up/clip in/drift forward into the ASL in preparation for getting a green light in a couple of seconds after the cross-wise flow gets its amber.

    It's not so much that the amber phase's length is a problem but in situations where people waiting to turn right across oncoming traffic don't get a filter and have to wait for the oncoming traffic to be killed by the red before they trundle merrily through (also on the red, but if they're past the stop line...) the gap between a red turning into a green for the cross-wise stream should be longer to prevent people heading off to find people still trickling through to turn right. West Port > Lady Lawson is quite bad for that.

    Posted 13 years ago #

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