City Rewarding Safe Drivers With Never-Ending Green Lights Sees Dramatic Drop In Speeds And Crashes

The U.S. has a speeding problem, one that has given drivers the impression that consistently driving over the speed limit is fine because everyone else is doing it. Studies revealed that higher speeds leads to an increase in crashes, so instead of punishing drivers which has sorta worked, cities like Portland, Oregon and Albuquerque, New Mexico are incentivizing drivers who follow the posted speed limits. The gift? Green lights. And according to AP News, it's helped reduce speeds and crashes along the busy corridors where these signals are being used.

The operation as it's been coined is called "Rest in Red" and it's not entirely new. Rest in red, as explained by Portland's Bureau of Transportation, are signals using timing or active radar to scan vehicle speed to activate green lights. The intersection lights remain red until a vehicle approaches it. With speed radars, the operation can help keep things more fluid so, if an approaching driver falls within the speed limit range, the sensor will trigger a green light when the car approaches. For speeding drivers, the light will remain red and force the driver to come to a stop. The aim is to punish drivers who are speeding. 

Use of this operation has had promising results. A study back from 1977 for the Public Works Journal looked at Rest in Red implemented at intersections and found that its usage reduced average speeds and accidents (if in areas where they were not already low). Albuquerque, which implemented this operation at several of its intersections a few years ago has said that less than 50% of its drivers are speeding, while also reducing the overall speed of speeders. It's also seen a dramatic drop in crashes and resulting injuries along one of its busy roads.

Portland and its Bureau of Transportation recently introduced several of these signals at problematic intersections to hopefully reap the benefits and see a reduction in its speed-related crashes. Already with the first intersection that underwent the change the average speed there lowered from 39 mph to 30 mph.

Long Beach, introduced Rest in Red lights as far back as the early 2010s. The city has since pivoted to working more automated speed enforcement technology for red light enforcement, involving cameras to capture and fine speedy offenders instead. Long Beach's program further inspired the state of California to establish a pilot program to implement the same system in five more cities over five years. What's most interesting is this is the same technology Portland and Albuquerque are pivoting from.

Where Long Beach may have failed, even though the city may just have a unique problem with drivers running red lights as a whole, can Portland and Albuquerque's program work to "catch more flies with honey?" It might not eliminate speeding, but it's already shown to have reduced speeding and accidents. Without direct data at the moment, it's difficult to say how much more effective it is though. Although if the data's not easy to find, perhaps what they found was that the system works, just maybe not as impressively as one might have hoped.