A reader suggests that installing intersection traffic light countdown timers for...

A reader suggests that installing intersection traffic light countdown timers for drivers, like those for pedestrians, could help decrease collisions. Credit: Randee Daddona

This may help stop red-light violators

Your editorial “Caution on red-light cameras” [Opinion, Dec. 8] does not mention this better method for deterring red-light runners:

A driver approaching an intersection at a reasonable speed does not know when the light will change from green to yellow or from yellow to red. Instead, it should be required that every intersection with a red-light camera have installed a countdown clock facing each direction of travel. Then drivers can tell from a distance when the light facing them will change from green to yellow.

Safe drivers will then determine at a distance whether to go through the intersection or reduce speed to stop safely before the intersection. Drivers to the rear should also see the clock so there will be fewer instances of last-second jamming brakes just before the intersection and fewer rear-end collisions.

A 15-second clock would give everyone sufficient time and distance to determine how to proceed before the intersection.

If countdown clocks were mandatory for approaches to red-light camera intersections, just like with clocks for pedestrians, everyone would be safer. Any cost to build or maintain the clocks should come out of the fines obtained from red-light-camera violators.

 — Burt Feilich, East Rockaway

As we now seem to be living in a world where up is down and down is up, I’m having a hard time understanding the logic behind suspending the red-light camera program in Suffolk County [“Red-light camera program ends today in Suffolk,” News, Dec. 1].

Rear-end crashes have increased since the program’s inception. So, many Long Island drivers should acknowledge they travel way too fast and too close to the motorist in front of them to have sufficient time to react and stop to a yellow light.

One of the first rules we learned as new drivers is that if you hit someone in a rear-end collision, except for a few situations, you are at fault. Apparently, our elected officials have decided the result — a cash grab, for one — takes precedent over the root cause of the problem, which is unsafe driving habits.

I’ve already seen drivers blasting through intersections where red-light cameras once operated. So let’s all be prepared to get honked at if we hesitate one extra second when our light turns green to make sure a vehicle isn’t flying through an intersection before we proceed.

 — Steve Pampinella, Holbrook

When a light turns red, there is a big difference between driving straight through an intersection and making a right turn at the intersection. A right turn is safer than driving straight through, yet most tickets have gone to drivers who make a right turn on red.

Statistics show that few accidents occur when making a right turn on red.

Tickets should be issued only to drivers who drive straight through a red light at intersections.

 — Ralph Daino, Wantagh

Biden pardon makes point about gun laws

The pardon of Hunter Biden is a wake-up call to repeal pointless gun control laws.

There seems to be a consensus that the pardon of Hunter Biden was reasonable and appropriate, and that had he not been President Joe Biden’s son, he would not have been indicted and convicted [“Pardon us, but we beg to differ,” Letters, Dec.  6].

The president himself alluded to Hunter’s crimes as effectively victimless and harmless.

It is important to point out, however, that according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, more than 8,000 people were convicted in just 2023 of receiving or possessing a firearm in violation of the same federal gun control law under which Hunter Biden was convicted and pardoned.

If violations of this federal gun control law are considered pardonable and victimless, then why are so many thousands of people convicted annually of the same crime that Biden committed and was pardoned for?

As a life member of the National Rifle Association, I note that Second Amendment advocates have been saying all along that gun control laws don’t work. This seems to support that premise.

 — Vincent J. Cristiano, Ronkonkoma

Is loyalty to the left the reason why almost every letter favored Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter? Several readers said a felon is returning to the White House. Were the charges against President-elect Donald Trump politically motivated by a Biden-weaponized Justice Department? State Attorney General Letitia James campaigned on trying Trump. Are the readers OK with that and also with preemptive pardons?

Trump has said, “The best revenge is success.” I agree.

— Tom Dougherty, Huntington Station

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