{"id":1003,"date":"2019-07-24T13:27:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-24T13:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=1003"},"modified":"2019-07-24T13:27:12","modified_gmt":"2019-07-24T13:27:12","slug":"the-city-of-lakeland-leads-a-pilot-study-in-red-light-running-detection-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/07\/24\/the-city-of-lakeland-leads-a-pilot-study-in-red-light-running-detection-program\/","title":{"rendered":"The City of Lakeland leads a pilot study in red-light running detection program"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Red light running results in near miss Lakeland\" width=\"1110\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WqDQEH46NMI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Red-light cameras don&#8217;t stop drivers from running lights,\nbut new technology could decrease the odds of their action resulting in a\nserious collision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More than 50 drivers each day fly through a solid red light\nat the intersection of U.S Highway 98 and North Crystal Lake Road in Lakeland,\naccording to Angelo Rao, the city&#8217;s traffic operations manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;It means 52 cars per day run the light when the\nperpendicular green is on,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That&#8217;s 52 times a day. We have\nthe data to prove it.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The number comes from the city&#8217;s pilot Intersection\nCollision Safety program, which is among the first of its kind in the state,\naccording to Rao. The study aims to determine whether or not extending the\nall-red phase of a traffic signal by a few seconds could reduce the number of\ncrashes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last November, the city spent $60,000 to install sensors at\nfour major city intersections. These devices count how many vehicles go through\na traffic signal in phase: green, yellow, yellow-changing-red and an all-red\nsignal. It also tracks how many seconds after the light turns red that cars are\nstill speeding through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;This is truly cutting-edge technology,&#8221; City\nManager Tony Delgado said. &#8220;This will be an additional enhancement that\nwill tie into the red-light camera program.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The three intersections, aside from U.S. 98, chosen for the\npilot include Memorial Boulevard at Dr. Martin L. King Ave. and Massachusetts\nAve., and South Florida Ave. and Beacon Road. Rao said these locations have\nred-light cameras installed that can also provide video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;We need to have the backup to show how severe it is,&#8221;\nhe said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lakeland Police Department issued nearly 10,000 citations to\nred-light runners at those four intersections in 2018 \u2014 with 3,289 based on\nwestbound vehicles on Memorial Boulevard alone, according to police spokeswoman\nRobin Tillett.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even worse, Rao said preliminary data from the pilot program\nshows drivers are most likely to speed through traffic signals between the\nhours of 6 a.m. to noon, and 4 to 9 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;It&#8217;s a sad reality,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rao and his department will continue crunching numbers to decide\nwhether city officials ask FDOT for permission to extend the all-red traffic\nphase at selected intersections. By how long, is a subject for debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;You don&#8217;t want to upset traffic patterns too\nmuch,&#8221; he said. &#8220;What if I extend it by 9 seconds? Now you have\nfrustrated motorists involved in secondary crashes or engage in bad\nbehavior.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Currently, the state regulates the length of red light from 1 to 4 seconds based on the size of an intersection, the speed limit and the number of lanes involved, according to Rao.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">City staff members will assemble a preliminary report on\nred-light running detectors by the end of August. It will be submitted to the\nstate&#8217;s Traffic Engineering Research Lab, who will determine if the equipment\nto automatically extend red lights and delay the green signal is safe for use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If approved, Lakeland drivers could see a new system put\ninto place by 2021. Rao told the city commission it would cost approximately\n$125,000 to place red-extend detectors at four additional intersections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Red-light cameras don&#8217;t stop drivers from running lights, but new technology could decrease the odds of their action resulting in a serious collision. More than 50 drivers each day fly&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}