Some US cities have begun rewarding careful drivers with fewer red lights

Officials struggled for years to curb high-speed crashes along a residential corridor cutting through Albuquerque, New Mexico, but simply punishing the lead-footed drivers didn’t seem to work. What ultimately did was rewarding the law-abiding ones with fewer red lights. The solution, which the city credits for a dramatic drop in crashes and injuries along one busy stretch of road, is a relatively novel version of a long-standing traffic safety concept commonly known as “rest in red,” in which traffic signals default to red until a vehicle approaches. But Albuquerque and Portland, Oregon, took it a step further by adding speed sensors that grant a much earlier green light to drivers traveling at or below the posted limit. Portland recently rolled out the concept during the late-night hours on Southeast Powell Boulevard, a busy state highway with a long history of crashes, including fatal ones. Peter Koonce, who manages signals and street lighting for the city, calls the new approach a “virtual speed bump” and said the early results are promising. At the first intersection tested, rest in red was able to lower the average speed from 39 mph (63 kph) to 30 mph (48 kph), which is the speed limit, he said. Oregon State University researchers helped Portland choose its vehicle detection system for monitoring speeds, and now they’re assessing its performance. David Hurwitz, a professor of transportation engineering who leads the study, said it's too early to draw sweeping conclusions. “This choice that we are making to try to increase speed compliance seems like it’s working really well—seems like it has potential,” said Hurwitz, who stressed that further research is needed to ensure those gains aren’t offset by more drivers running red lights or other negative consequences. This article was provided by The Associated Press.