Initiative profiteer Tim Eyman seems determined to rid Washington’s intersections of red-light cameras, even if it kills him. Or you. Or the 700-or-so Americans who die each year due to red-light running.
Following the success of last year’s local initiative outlawing red-light cameras in his hometown of Mukilteo, Eyman’s taking his latest for-profit/anti-government gimmick on the road. This year, he’s cosponsoring copycat measures in Bellingham, Monroe, Wenatchee, and Longview. But while Eyman provocatively characterizes the cameras as the “crack cocaine” of city budget writers and “taxation-by-citation, just another way for government to pick the pockets of taxpayers,” a definitive new study conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) finds that red-light cameras save lives.
Comparing crash statistics between 1992–1996 and 2004–2008 in the 99 US cities with populations above 200,000, researchers found a 35 percent reduction in red-light fatalities in cities that implemented red-light-camera programs, versus a 14 percent reduction in those that did not.
But the cameras’ benefits actually proved to be much bigger. When all crashes at signaled intersections were tallied, not just those due to red-light running, total fatalities dropped 14 percent in cities with cameras, while rising 2 percent in cities without. Overall, researchers estimate that while red-light cameras saved 159 lives between 2004 and 2008, a total of 815 deaths could have been prevented had the cameras been installed throughout.
The crash statistics are startling. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that red-light running caused 113,000 injuries and 676 deaths in 2009 alone. But for Lori Koidahl of Shoreline, these are more than just scary numbers.
On the afternoon of June 19, 2007, Koidahl’s mother, Kathy Cook, had just gotten off a bus at the Kenmore Park-and-Ride, when a truck ran a red light at the intersection of 73rd Avenue Northeast and Bothell Way, colliding with a front loader and careening into a crowd of pedestrians. Cook was fatally crushed against a light pole. She was only 56.
For Koidahl, the calculation is simple. As the IIHS study bears out, red-light cameras change drivers’ behavior; had there been one at that intersection, Koidahl believes, her mother might be alive today. When asked to speculate about the appeal of Eyman’s anti-red-light-camera initiatives, she was stumped.
“It’s hard for me to understand how someone could work against something that saves lives,” Koidahl said. “It’s just hard to understand.” 
I also can’t stand Tim Eyman, but I’m with him on the red-light cam issue. I received a ticket via a red-light cam while making a free-right turn on E. John Street. Not only had I stopped briefly before making that turn, but my long-term knowledge of that intersection told me that the light was red to oncoming traffic, and therefore there would be NO potential danger. I resented the fact that while the ticket arrived, it never told me how many seconds were considered a legal stop or how to correct my behavior; and I found out that two neighbors in my block had received exactly the same ticket, using the same historical assumptions about the traffic patterns that I did. And here I thought these cams were just about people running red lights, not people making legal right turns. Count me in as a traffic cam hater.
Tapping your phone line could save lives too, are you okay with that? Will you support any high tech meets Big Brother initiative as long as a statistic can be found suggesting its effectiveness?