Red Light Runners

If most intersection accidents occur within 2 seconds of a light change, you'd wonder why traffic engineers don't just give all four directions a red light for two seconds before changing to a green.

I think it's because as soon as people understood that opposing traffic had to wait two seconds, there would be more red light runners. Red light runners would know that opposing traffic would just sit there for two seconds while they blew through red lights. They'd have a two second window to run the red.

Secondly, and perhaps more important to an engineer, is that a two second delay represents an under utilization of the intersection. For two seconds, no one is using it. What a waste! To push through as many motor vehicles as possible is Rule #1, and to allow a delay for the intersection to clear possible red light runners is anathema to that rule.

To combat the issue of red light runners, we could randomly time the delay from 0 to 4 seconds. Then we'd have, on average, a full two seconds of delay at the intersection which would decrease the number of accidents.

But no. There is not a single interchange anywhere where there is any delay between red and green. Not one...but remember, as I hesitate on my bike at the instant the light turns green, the first cars also hesitate by seeing me hesitate. I create the delay that our engineers won't. I am an active player in fucking up the Sacramento area traffic planning biblical passage of "thou shall not delay thy motorized vehicle lest thee be cast alive into the lake of fire." They plan to allow 100% capacity utilization of intersections and I'm making the intersections marginally safer by cutting into their designs.