[tweetmeme]About a month ago I was in downtown Nashville to meet a friend for lunch. I came up to an intersection as the light was changing but it made sense to go ahead and roll through the yellow light rather than stomping on the break and skidding to a halt. The light changed to red before I was even through the intersection though and I remember thinking, “That light was yellow for barely two seconds. That must have been a mistake.”

I ran across a blog article on Digg this morning that made me realize it wasn’t a mistake and that it was most likely done for profit. Originally, this was found on Motorist.org but the site seems to be down as of this morning so I’ll refer you to a cached copy on Google’s server here.

The article listed 6 cities in the United States that were found to have shortened the duration of the yellow light as a means to collect more money from traffic violations. Both Nashville and Chattanooga were on this list.

Some local governments have ignored the safety benefit of increasing the yellow light time and decided to install red-light cameras, shorten the yellow light duration, and collect the profits instead.”

Source: 6 Cities That Were Caught Shortening Yellow Light Times For Profit (motorist.org, 3/26/2008)

In Nashville, the situation wasn’t limited to red-light cameras, as was my experience. I was apparently one of the lucky ones who managed to drive through a so-called “ticket trap” without getting caught.

In 2006, Nashville resident Joe Savage obtained the data on every red light running ticket issued on Broadway Street since 2000. He said that yellow lights are longer at intersections along Broadway until the areas where police are issuing tickets. At those locations, Savage clocked the yellow signal time at less than 3 seconds, in violation of both state law and federal regulations. A local newspaper, The Nashville Scene, then confirmed his findings.

Source:

Yellow Light Blues (Nashville Scene, 5/11/2006)

Our tax payer funded law enforcement – breaking laws to profit further from the taxpayers. Awesome.

These articles are a bit dated but the problem still seems to exist and may possibly be growing. I’d be interested in hearing some feedback. Maybe you’re one of the unlucky ones who got caught. I’d love to hear your story so please be sure to comment.

UPDATE: I was nosing around some more on motorist.org and found this article here: http://www.motorists.org/blog/short-yellow-light-times-no-longer-going-unnoticed, which was written in April 2009. There is also a campaign against short yellow lights (no, really!) at http://www.shortyellowlights.com. Pretty interesting stuff. Check it out.

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