Cities all around the SF Bay Area have been removing their red light cameras. Here in Menlo Park the city just dropped ours. And about time! They were widely hated for mailing people fake tickets for minor infractions that were not a safety hazard at all, like slowly rolling through a right turn with no other traffic in the vicinity.
I used to be annoyed by red light cameras because they triggered on "safe" infractions, like right turns on red. Over the past few years I've changed my mind, because I've almost been hit as a pedestrian and on my bike by people sliding through intersections, to the point where I've physically prevented myself from being hit by pushing off the car a couple times.
Right on red is awesome as a driver, but it makes roads really dangerous for other road users. I think bad intersection design is partly to blame for perceived "frivolous" red light tickets, but at the same time I think that drivers really should come to a complete stop before the line (and before the crosswalk if there is one) before deciding if a right turn on red is safe or practicable. If people can't even be bothered to stop for a right turn on red then it's probably better to ban them outright.
Also, I've seen enough people run red lights 2-3 seconds after the light changes that I want red light cameras at every intersection anyways. It might be 1 in every 250 people who gets dinged for the right turn on red ticket, but that's stupidly dangerous.
If a fix is needed, increase the fine for blowing the light, scale it based on the time the light had been red (so you don't excessively punish people who got caught in the zone of indecision), and reduce the fine for rolling through a right on red.
Do you always look both ways before entering the street? I always try to do that, both because that's what I was taught to do as a child, and because it seems like the best way to ensure my safety when walking. The only times as a pedestrian when I've been nearly hit by a car is when I've failed to do that.
Here are 2 scenarios that might explain OP's point of view.
You are walking up to an intersection and the crosswalk sign is green. You look right and across the intersection all the traffic is stopped. You look left and there is a car coming, but it is clearly slowing down for the red light. You step into the intersection, but the car doesn't actually stop. They turn right at the intersection. You have to jump away. The problem here is not that you didn't look, but that you misinterpreted what the car was doing. It would be best to wait until all approaching cars are actually stopped before entering the intersection, but next time you are crossing a street I challenge you to see if you always do that. It's surprisingly uncommon because the car is "obviously" stopping.
The second is more of a clear cut problem. Bicycles often travel at speeds much faster than people expect. It's not unusual for a road bike to be going over 30 km/h (just under 20 mph). Cars should wait for you to clear the intersection, but often they aren't looking for bikes and will make a right hand turn, cutting off the cyclist. It happened to me many times in Canada. I'm very happy that the turn-on-red rule is not allowed in Japan where I live now.
California has a little-known law that tries to protect bicyclists from the "right hook" accident you mention. If there is a bike lane, drivers are required to merge into the bike lane before turning right, instead of turning from the car lane and cutting across the bike lane.
This is why bike lane stripes have a dotted section when approaching an intersection, to give drivers a hint about what they are supposed to do. Unfortunately, only a minority of drivers understand and follow the hint.
> They were widely hated for mailing people fake tickets for minor infractions that were not a safety hazard at all, like slowly rolling through a right turn with no other traffic in the vicinity.
You meant to say “real tickets”, right, since you described someone actually breaking the law — and I've seen many, many times where “no other traffic” meant “no other traffic which the driver saw, correctly understood, and respected”. I've had a few close calls in crosswalks and there's nothing fake about it.
