Thursday, October 07, 1999
Drivers run red, but not in rage
Study: Tristate safer at lights
BY TANYA ALBERT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Drivers admit that running red lights is dangerous, but more than half do it anyway.
About 98 percent of American drivers 18 and older say red-light running is risky, researchers at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., found. At the same time, nearly 56 percent of the 880 people interviewed admit they've done it.
But it's the reason people gave that surprised researchers: Almost half the people said they were simply in a hurry.
“We thought road rage was the reason,” said psychologist Bryan Porter, the chief researcher at Old Dominion. “But people do it because they think they're saving time. ... That's scarier for me because we have relatively rational people making the decision to go through the light.”
The telephone survey was conducted from June to Augustand had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Cincinnati is no exception to the findings. Drivers here say they run red lights and see other drivers doing the same.
Angie Martin, 28, of Northside said she sees it happen in Clifton all the time: “Usually people are pushing a yellow light that turns red as they're going through it.”
Fairfield resident Cindy McGregor said she's watched red-light runners cause two accidents in the last few years. Nationally, drivers who run red lights cause 89,000 crashes annually, resulting in nearly 1,000 deaths, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
But Cincinnati has been lucky. The city has the fifth safest record when it comes to fatal crashes caused by red-light running among American cities with 200,000 or more people.
But the potential is there.
“People drive crazy around here,” Hamilton resident Stephanie Jones. “I see people run them every day. People just don't want to get stuck.”
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