Cities Nationwide Try To Stop Red-Light Runners

Spokane area officials aren’t the only ones using creative measures and federal money to battle a steady stream of red-light runners.

In Natchez, Miss., police chased down drivers who didn’t run red lights and gave them free T-shirts.

In Jackson, Mich., residents painted a transit bus black and covered it with slogans warning motorists to heed the lights.

In Lexington, Ky., officials handed out bumper stickers and pencils with the message “In the Bluegrass, Red Means Stop.”

In Spokane, authorities posted warnings on billboards, buses and bumper stickers.

From Boston’s Harvard Yard to Oklahoma’s cowboy country to San Francisco to Spokane, communities are trying just about anything to stop red-light running.

“This is not just a local problem,” said Bev Ward of Jackson, director of one of 32 federally sponsored programs around the nation targeting red-light runners. “In the U.S., 22 percent of all urban crashes are the result of disregarding traffic signs or signals.”

There is no way to know whether the phenomenon is on the rise or how many people disregard traffic signals. But it is clear that communities are increasingly frustrated.

Nationwide, the number of fatal accidents at stop lights climbed 13 percent in three years, according to 1995 data from the federal Department of Transportation. Experts interpret that as an indication that more people are running red lights.

“This is a 13 percent increase in what was already a huge problem,” said Richard Retting, a transportation engineer with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an industry research organization.

“These aren’t just numbers on data sheets,” he said. “These are lives being snuffed out. These are husbands that will never go home to their wives and children that can never again be enjoyed by their families.”

Last year, the Federal Highway Administration awarded $600,000 in small grants to communities, including Spokane, for public education campaigns aimed at drivers who casually run red lights.

The communities ranged from urban areas, like Boston and San Francisco, where drivers battle traffic jams each day, to towns like Natchez, population 21,000, where program coordinator Angie Brown says, “Our idea of congestion is having to wait through two cycles of a stoplight.”

In nearly every community participating in the federal project, residents experienced a tragedy caused by red-light running.

A $15,500 grant went to Spokane, where a passenger in a car was killed last April after the driver ran a red light at Howard and Maxwell.

A $30,000 grant went to central Oklahoma, where a kindergartner was killed by a redlight runner. In Mississippi, where Natchez received $15,000, the lieutenant governor sustained serious injuries last year when his car was hit by a woman who ran a stop sign.

Do the programs work? There’s no scientific evidence, but surveys in the handful of communities that have finished the program indicate an increase in awareness.

Last fall, Spokane authorities announced a significant decrease in the number of citations issued for running red lights since their campaign began.

In Lexington, Ky., 58 percent of those surveyed after the campaign indicated they had gotten the message from signs and public service announcements - and nearly half of them said they had changed their habits.

, DataTimes