Red Alert

In Boston, people say that when a driver approaches a light turning red he or she should be extra careful. The driver behind may be speeding up to run it.

And Boston isn't alone.

As science writer Michael Fumento noted on our op-ed page last week, a camera set up at an intersection in Fairfax, Va., a year ago caught more than 2,300 motorists running a red light in just three weeks.

We write to reinforce the point of Fumento's column because one remedy for this lawless behavior is the presence of well-advertised surveillance cameras at problem traffic lights in more communities. States with known problem intersections ought to use this deterrent. There's widespread evidence that it works, as long experience in Britain has shown.

In California, the legislature almost caved in to a nonsensical complaint that the drone-camera deterrent smacked of Nazi Germany. But then logic prevailed and legislators declined to ban the cameras. Considering that red-light-running causes some quarter million accidents and 800 fatalities a year nationwide, that's the right answer.