Peoria Red Light Cameras Increase Accidents

Peoria Accident Rate: On January 31, 2008, the city council authorized an Australian company, Redflex Traffic Systems, to issue automated traffic violations at four city intersections. Before and after comparison of two year’s worth of accident data — from July 2007 to June 2008 compared to July 2008 to June 2009: At 91st Avenue and Bell road, accidents increased 100 percent, including a 120 percent jump in rear end and “stopped for red light” collisions, in the year after red light cameras were installed. At 75th Avenue and Thunderbird Road, accidents increased 480 percent. The number of right-angle and head-on collisions increased from 4 to 20, while rear-end collisions also jumped 400 percent. At 83rd Avenue and Union Hills, where only left turns are monitored by cameras, accidents increased just 11 percent. At 83rd Avenue and Thunderbird Road, accidents increased 29 percent; including a 300 percent jump in rear-ends collisions. Taken together, accidents increased a total of 103 percent at all four intersections. The city council was made aware of the increase in accidents by the police department at six months and a year after the program began, but continued the program anyways. thenewspaper.com RED LINES FHWA’s Acting Director of Transportation Operations, Paul Pisano: “The Manual on Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) does not contain any provisions for the use of transverse lines to indicate the legal limits of an intersection for red light violation purposes …