SHINE A LIGHT ON DRIVER DISTRACTION

DOES THE TIMING OF RED LIGHTS, OR THE LACK OF TRAFFIC SIGNALS THAT ARE SYNCHRONIZED, CONTRIBUTE TO DRIVER DISTRACTION AND THE RUNNING OF RED LIGHTS?”

A new survey puts Albertans among the country’s worst drivers. The Angus Reid poll is actually an opportunity to test drive the theory that traffic optimization — or the lack thereof — directly contributes to driver behaviour.

Alberta scored top marks in running red lights, with 73 per cent of respondents saying they witnessed the offending behaviour at least once in the past month. Other bad driving habits observed included typical distracted driving behaviour, like talking on a cellphone, speeding and turning without signalling first.

To be sure, driver education plays a significant role. In a province that has privatized its licence and registration system, one has to wonder how this contributes to the trend. Are the licensing standards unofficially laxer in practice, when one is paying a for-profit company to administer the test? After all, a private company needs to keep its customers happy; a consideration that has no bearing on the driver licensing service that is government operated.

But how does the timing of red lights, or the lack of traffic signals that are synchronized, contribute to driver distraction and the running of red lights? If you are familiar with the intersection because you drive it every day, and you know you will have to wait two, three or four minutes for the next green light, there is a temptation to run that red.

Alternatively, drivers settle in, get comfortable, and perhaps become distracted with their cellphones, knowing they are in for a wait.

Siva Narla, a senior director with the Institute of Transportation Engineers in Washington, D.C., says drivers should not be waiting longer than three minutes for a green light, and should never be waiting that long unless they are on a side street yielding to the main stream of traffic.

“It’s typically recommended that it not be kept much longer than three minutes ... There’s no reason to hold it much longer,” said Narla. “If you are in the main stream of traffic, one should have enough optimization so that you are not sitting for two or three minutes waiting for the signal. On the side street, however, that’s possible.”

Calgary has some intersections where the light cycle is closer to a frustrating four minutes.

As an experiment, I timed the lights along Memorial Drive between 10th Street and Edmonton Trail N.W. Memorial is hardly a side street, but a major thoroughfare cutting across the city, with speed limits as high as 80 km/h. In that 1.5-kilometre stretch, there are five lights that aren’t properly optimized. The most recently installed lights, a crosswalk east of 10th Street, remained red well after the slowest pedestrian crossed Memorial’s four lanes. The red lasted between 27 and 28 seconds; a full 15 seconds after the pedestrian crossed and was well on his way down the street. Cyclists more commonly use this crosswalk to get on and off the pathway. One cyclist I watched cross, was out of view of my camera by the time the light turned green. Meanwhile, drivers wait at red, when there’s no reason to be waiting, and see, well, red, and we wonder why Albertans scored high on road rage?

At the Edmonton Trail intersection, the red light for westbound drivers on Memorial was twice as long as the green. Drivers waited between 57 and 59 seconds for the next green, which lasted a mere 25 to 27 seconds. The yellow light was just four seconds, under the 4.5- to five-second standard recommended by the National Motorists Association Foundation. The U.S.-based foundation has launched a campaign to Stop Short Yellow Lights, arguing they are dangerous. It’s calling on all lights to be properly timed in the more than 370 U.S. cities, that, like Calgary, have red-light cameras.

“Red-light cameras can only remain profitable at poorly engineered intersections,” says the association. “Once an intersection is fixed, the money dries up quickly.”

Let’s talk about downtown, where, with all of the one-way streets, it should be fairly simple to synchronize the lights, like how it is done in New York. Drivers in that city can drive for miles before hitting a red light.

“If traffic is really bad, you’re hitting plenty of red lights, but if you didn’t have optimization, you’d be gridlocked, meaning you’re stopping others from moving through the intersection by being in the middle,” Narla says of New York. “Optimization prevents (gridlock) in most major cities. That’s a bigger concern than hitting red lights.”

Calgary’s downtown grid, by comparison, is not optimized, and thus is often gridlocked during rush hour. A green light means nothing because the next light in the sequence, even on a one-way street, is red, and the traffic is backed up a block.

Albertans, according to the poll, like honking their horns at bad drivers. They should instead turn their rage where it belongs, and demand city officials get serious about optimizing traffic signals and get moving on light synchronization.