Do ACT Police care about red light runners?

Would love to see some of the cyclist that run red lights in front of me every morning get done too… Cyclists want equal rights on the roads, then blatantly thumb their nose at the road rules when it suits… Just saying…

wildturkeycanoe said :

There is a simple explanation as to why people run red arrows. When it is busy [peak hour] and sometimes not so busy, the following scenario occurs.
Cars queue up at the right hand slip lane at the red arrow. The arrow eventually turns green. Three vehicles go through the intersection before the light turns amber…

I get what you’re saying here, and it is as frustrating as hell when that happens. In the examples in my OP though, this wasn’t what was causing people to run the red – it was pure impatience. The people who are running these lights, including the one that sailed through the red while the police sat there doing nothing, are arriving in the slip lane when or just before the light’s turning amber. Instead of stopping, they just keep going.

These drivers refuse to wait for a single cycle of the lights, and just sail on through. Apparently that’s a far lower risk strategy than I’d ever imagined it’d be.

I was sitting next to a police car (a very obvious police car mind you, complete with the word POLICE sprawled across it) on Yamba Drive when a car in the turning lane next to it ran a red. I was in the left lame, Cop was in the right, other guy was in the turning lane and just went. Cop did absolutely nothing, I was pretty gobsmacked.

Probably more interested in catching the person doing 3-5 km/h over the limit – I’m sure they’d jump all over that.

Can’t say I’m surprised though.

Antagonist said :

Well, we do complain that we want them to focus on real crime, and that may well be what he/she was doing. Waiting for somebody to appear that Mr Plod has a genuine interest in – perhaps somebody with outstanding warrants or involved in serious crime rather than misdemeanour offenses. If police are trying to discourage red light runners, they would be more likely to do it in one of their high-vis vehicles so they can be seen. This is far less effective in an inconspicuous unmarked car.

Why not issue a quick ticket whilst waiting though? Would go a long way to show the general public that the media releases aren’t just waffle (like we know they are).

wildturkeycanoe said :

There is a simple explanation as to why people run red arrows. When it is busy [peak hour] and sometimes not so busy, the following scenario occurs.

[snip rest of good explanation]

Why have lights that don’t have arrows, or those with red arrows that turn off after a while, gone out of fashion? There are very few left in the ACT, they’re only there to trick learners during driving tests now, I suspect. There are plenty of examples (eg Cotter onto Parkway) where you have a clear view for hundreds of metres of anything coming and can easily turn right most of the time in safety. But no, you’re stuck at a red arrow while hundred of phantom vehicles go past.

The ones going south on Yamba Drive at the corner of Launceston street near Phillip College are an optional stop set too. As someone who crosses there each night I can pretty much guarantee that 4-5 cars go through not just on orange, but on red and well after. A number try and do the two for one by zooming through the lights at the St Peter and Paul’s School at Garran too.

Oh the helmet camera footage I could show from that corner…

and when my light goes green to cross, I’m bloody sure I wait till the oncoming cars WILL be stopping before I cross.

There is a simple explanation as to why people run red arrows. When it is busy [peak hour] and sometimes not so busy, the following scenario occurs.
Cars queue up at the right hand slip lane at the red arrow. The arrow eventually turns green. Three vehicles go through the intersection before the light turns amber. Meanwhile, cars are joining the queue and wondering why it is taking forever to get through this intersection. By now the right turn slip lane’s queue has built so far back that the dual lane carriageway has become just one lane going straight forward due to the incompetence of traffic control, which does not allow more than 3 cars at a time to turn right into a non-existent priority of oncoming traffic whilst a blockade builds up behind.
Perfect example of this is the right hand turn into Souothern Cross Drive from Kingsford Smith, heading toward Kippax. Three cars only got through on the green [about 5 seconds of it], the third one barely. I, sitting around number seven in the queue, merged back into Kingsford Smith and went straight seeing as it was green now, did a U-turn up at O’loghlen St. and was able to get back onto Southern Cross before the lights had even let the straight traffic through from Belconnen town center. It certainly beat sitting there for another two rounds of red arrow, which seems to happen no matter how heavy the traffic is or how many cars are queued up waiting.
This is in no way an excuse to break the law, but frustration, especially when it is consistently frustrating you every single day for no good or logical reason, will eventually break one’s respect for the rules. What if you had a road worker standing on Northbourne Avenue stopping all the traffic for a period of two minutes, for no apparent reason, every single morning and afternoon? Wouldn’t people eventually disregard his STOP sign and simply drive through?

OP must be mistaken, motorists don’t go through red lights, only cyclists do…

On a side note, the police now have two less high-vis vehicles after a massive stack yesterday am (10/10/2014) on the Monaro – just south of the AMC. There was debris scattered everywhere with two cop cars completely wrecked and a lone 4WD nearby without as much damage. We nearly added to the wreckage because they didn’t think to send a cop car a little further up the road around the bends to slow approaching traffic down from 80km/h. Anyone know what happened?

Well, we do complain that we want them to focus on real crime, and that may well be what he/she was doing. Waiting for somebody to appear that Mr Plod has a genuine interest in – perhaps somebody with outstanding warrants or involved in serious crime rather than misdemeanour offenses. If police are trying to discourage red light runners, they would be more likely to do it in one of their high-vis vehicles so they can be seen. This is far less effective in an inconspicuous unmarked car.