3 ms·
As a person outside of US, I find this interesting. In Finland, the duration of a yellow light is defined in Finnish directive for traffic lights. For speed lim
by tkok89 8y ago
As a person outside of US, I find this interesting. In Finland, the duration of a yellow light is defined in Finnish directive for traffic lights. For speed limits of 40-50 (km per h) duration is three seconds and for 60 kmph it is four seconds and over that it must be 5 seconds.
So the three second time is a norm here in a city area. I wonder how much that affects the statistics of traffic safety. Can someone explain me, why a shorter duration of yellow light causes more accidents?
In Finland I think it is not illegal to drive pass red light if it is not safe to stop before them, so when you see the yellow light you must consider if it is possible stop the vehicle safely.
- esotericn 8y ago> Can someone explain me, why a shorter duration of yellow light causes more accidents? The purpose of an amber/yellow light is to give drivers a transitionary stage. Consider the limiting case, that a light goes from green to red with no intermediate period. Drivers will not be able to avoid running red lights. They'll approach the junction at 30mph, the light will change just before they reach it, and they'll go through. Now you've normalised running red lights. Drivers can't stop if they're 5m from the red (at 30mph), but what about 30m? 50m? 100m? There's no clear cutoff. So either you make the all-red cycle really quite long, or accidents increase.