i don't disagree that if you CAN stop for a yellow, you should. but if it will take maximum or near max braking to stop before i cross the stop line, i don't stop. of course, always drive to conditions... if it's raining, go slower, yadda yadda...
my wife recently got a ticket from a red light camera ($75 in Tomball, TX). in the letter we got, it had a link to an actual video, plainly showing her running it. obviously algorithms to detect motion and all that are a lot harder to write than a simple snapshot placing the vehicle when it turned red, and a second shot showing it in the intersection, still red.
but just like how we have dashcams, it's hard to argue with video. which is probably why they store it in their systems.
Hehe, my wife did the same thing in Fort Worth.
They sent the ticket along with video link.
Problem is, she's much safer driver than me, slow to accelerate, signalling a long time, stopping etc... but she's completely opposite when it comes to direction.
It takes a long time to get feel of direction and even then if she has to take a new street as detour, it confuses her.
That's what happened that time.
She had to go to an job interview and some of those streets are little confusing near the downtown so she stopped and asked direction to another driver who was helpful and said to follow him.
She followed him but he went in yellow light and my wife followed him closely fearing she'll loose him and get more confused on the roads but it turned to red light right on the white line.
Anywho, that's why now we have GPS.
For me, once I see some street signs and landmarks, no confusion ever, my brain automatically creates virtual map from any direction to any destination with more than one route already devised with calculations based on traffic lights, distance, speed limits etc...
Maybe that explains why I'm a software engineer while my wife hates anything computer except facebook and youtube.