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Officials struggled for years to curb high-speed crashes<\/a> along a residential corridor cutting through Albuquerque, New Mexico, but simply punishing the lead-footed drivers<\/a> didn\u2019t seem to work.<\/p>\n What ultimately did was rewarding the law-abiding ones with fewer red lights<\/a>.<\/p>\n The solution, which the city credits for a dramatic drop in crashes and injuries along one busy stretch of road, is a relatively novel version of a longstanding traffic safety<\/a> concept commonly known as \u201crest in red,” in which traffic signals default to red until a vehicle approaches. But Albuquerque and Portland, Oregon, took it a step further by adding speed sensors that grant a much earlier green light to drivers traveling at or below the posted limit.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re finding that the technology itself is kind of its best advertisement,\u201d Jennifer Turner, Albuquerque\u2019s director of municipal development, said of the strategy the city deployed on Lead and Coal avenues, parallel one-way streets. “If you come to Albuquerque right now and you\u2019re driving that corridor, you will learn pretty quickly that if you are speeding, you stop.\u201d<\/p>\n Isaac Romero, who lives along the corridor, said he has noticed a big difference. Before rest in red, he would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of drivers racing to beat the traffic lights or one another. He saw cars that had crashed and flipped<\/a>, including one that ended up in his neighbor’s yard.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had one accident where it\u2019s even shaken the whole house because some guy slammed into a tree,\u201d Romero said. \u201cIt’s a lot of change because now you don’t get as many people flying through there.\u201d<\/p>\n Portland recently rolled out the concept during the late-night hours on Southeast Powell Boulevard, a busy state highway with a long history of crashes, including fatal ones<\/a>.<\/p>\n Peter Koonce, who manages signals and street lighting for the city, calls the new approach a \u201cvirtual speed bump\u201d and said the early results are promising. At the first intersection tested, rest in red was able to lower the average speed from 39 mph (63 kph) to 30 mph (48 kph), which is the speed limit, he said.<\/p>\n Oregon State University researchers helped Portland choose its vehicle detection system for monitoring speeds, and now they’re assessing its performance. David Hurwitz, a professor of transportation engineering who leads the study, said it’s too early to draw sweeping conclusions.<\/p>\n \u201cThis choice that we are making to try to increase speed compliance seems like it\u2019s working really well \u2014 seems like it has potential,\u201d said Hurwitz, who stressed that further research is needed to ensure those gains aren’t offset by more drivers running red lights or other negative consequences.<\/p>\n Potential negative consequences are also a primary concern of Jay Beeber, chief government affairs and policy officer for the National Motorists Association, a drivers advocacy group. Although he acknowledges that rest in red could be effective in certain places at specific times, he questions whether driver behavior can really change without a broad education campaign and believes there are simpler, less-intrusive solutions.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it’s wishful thinking that drivers are aware enough and pay attention enough to really learn to change their speeds based on whether the light is gonna be red or not,\u201d Beeber said. \u201cI think people are going to end up at the light and just be frustrated. I don\u2019t think they\u2019re gonna know why.\u201d<\/p>\n