IIHS Says Traffic Cameras Save Lives

An intersection with a traffic camera has the potential to catch you breaking the law and end up increasing your auto insurance rates, but according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), while those cameras could be annoying, they’re also saving lives. The IIHS issued a report last week that found  these cameras have saved over 100 lives so far.

159 Lives Saved by Red-Light Photo Enforcement

According to last week’s report issued by the IIHS, a nonprofit traffic safety organization funded by the auto insurance industry, 159 lives were saved by red-light photo enforcement between 2004 and 2008. The lives were saved in 14 U.S. cities with populations over 200,000.

In 2009 alone, 676 people in the U.S. were killed in crashes caused by a driver running a red signal. A whopping 113,000 people were injured by the same type of accident. The number of lives saved with the installation of traffic cameras means that deaths caused by red-light running are slowly beginning to decrease.

Keep Your Rates Low by Following Traffic Rules

It may seem obvious that as a driver, it’s in your best interest to follow the rules of the road. Yet plenty of drivers end up speeding or hitting the accelerator on yellow instead of slowing to a stop.

With traffic signals and even portions of highways now equipped with traffic cameras, it is becoming easier for law enforcement to crack down on those who break traffic laws and issue tickets that could indeed increase auto insurance rates.

If you want to keep your rates low, you could spend every moment of your time on the road searching for traffic cameras to know when to obey traffic rules. But the better idea would be to obey traffic rules at all times to help keep the roads safe even when cameras aren’t around.

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