Intersection camera trial puts brakes on red-light runners

Impatient drivers are being tamed by red-light cameras at some of central Auckland's most dangerous intersections.

Auckland City reports an average 43 per cent drop in illegal red-light running at six surveyed intersections.

Those are among 10 sites through which four cameras are being rotated in a trial begun with police in May last year.

The dramatic result compares with average reductions of 7 to 8 per cent at 14 intersections where cameras have not been installed, according to data from electronic loop detectors connected to traffic lights.

Officials say although those figures are not statistically significant, they are encouraged by the trend, especially as drivers running red lights caused 689 crashes in the city in the five years to 2007 - and at least nine deaths since 2001.

But although the overall result at the surveyed camera sites exceeds expectations for the trial, which the Transport Agency will consider when deciding whether the new digital enforcement weapons should be adopted nationally, there are perplexing variations.

The biggest improvement was recorded at the Nelson St motorway off-ramp's intersection with Union St, where red-light offences fell 79 per cent from pre-trial days, turning it from the worst to the best of the six surveyed camera sites.

Of total flows through the intersection of 759,285 vehicles on surveyed days during the trial, only 7445 ran the red - just under one in every 100.

That compared with 4.78 red-light runners out of every 100 vehicles before the trial.

At the other extreme, a 3 per cent rise in offending was recorded at the intersection of Customs St and Gore St.

But that was the average offending rate for all four approaches to the intersection, and council officers are heartened by a 56 per cent reduction among vehicles entering it from Gore St North.

Road safety manager Karen Hay said yesterday that cameras were installed only above the most dangerous approach to each intersection.

Gore St North had been the source of most crashes involving red-light runners at the intersection in question, so she was particularly pleased - although mystified - by the marked reduction in offending from that approach.

The city's road safety spokesman, councillor John Lister, hopes the trial's success will persuade the Government to use revenue from $150 infringement notices issued by the police to buy more cameras.

"We would love to see the programme extended, not from a revenue point of view but for driver education.

"Auckland City doesn't get one dollar from this but I am trying hard to say to the Government, which gets the revenue of $150, to share a little bit with us so we can put more cameras up.

"We know intersections are the worst places to have accidents and that's what the lights are there for."

Mr Lister said that although he had been unable to obtain revenue figures from the police, he understood only one driver had challenged an infringement notice, and she gave up after seeing the evidence.

The police were also unable to provide infringement details to the Herald yesterday, and the Transport Agency said it was "premature" to discuss an expanded programme before the Government made decisions on a new penalty regime for a range of traffic offences.

A discussion paper the Ministry of Transport intends issuing in August, before the Government updates its road-safety strategy, is expected to seek public comment on whether demerit points should be added to fines for offences such as running lights.

Ms Hay said a final evaluation of the Auckland trial would be completed by the end of the year, after a public-perception survey in September and October.

The Transport Agency has paid a 53 per cent subsidy for the $800,000 trial, to which the city council has contributed $282,000 and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority $94,000.