¥Under the statutory requirements
of federal law, they are also required to apply nationally accepted
practices as recognized by the Institute of Transportation
Engineers (ITE), FHWA et al, not personal opinion or local practice.
¥
¥Within the statutory national
standards there use to be a professional legal requirement
to address a wrong. It was called ÒNotice of DefectÓ.
1983,
FHWA, Traffic Control Devices Handbook:
"Notice
of Defect Ó An
agency has a duty to correct a dangerous condition when that agency has actual or
"constructive" notice of the hazard.
¥
" Sidebar: Sadly the ITE
too has succumbed to politics and the special interest within the USDOT.
ItÕs an irrefutable fact that basing signal timing on
posted limits that do not reflect the actual speeds of traffic is an extremely unsafe
practice. Nonetheless, the ITE has now stopped
referencing the ÒNotice of DefectÓ
requirement altogether, and abandoned the prior
best practice that signal timing must meet the needs of traffic standard. The dichotomy
of the new ITE standard for signal timing, the yellow intervals adequacy can be
based on an invented number established by whim and local
political decree, in a National Standard that requires
Uniformity?