Why fine for running yellow light?

Along with increasing fines for many traffic violations, the regulation on penalties for running yellow lights stated in Decree 46/2016 of the Government (effective from today, August 1) is attracting the attention of many people.

Besides the consensus, there are also many concerns about the implementation, even fear of going beyond the law.

Illustration photo.

Regarding the yellow light fine, many people may be surprised because they do not know its function or still understand that this light is different from the red light in that it is a signal to prepare to stop, not to stop. In fact, the way to determine the error of running a yellow light is not new. Before Decree 46, the old decree on traffic violation penalties such as Decree 171/2013 also regulated this error.

Decree 46 differs from the old decree only in combining the two violations of running a red light and running a yellow light into the act of "not obeying traffic light signals" with specific fines. This regulation comes from the requirements of the Road Traffic Law (RTL) on the three colors of traffic light signals. Green means go. Red means no go. Yellow means stop before the stop line, except in cases where you have already gone past the stop line, then you can continue; in the case of a flashing yellow signal, you can go but you must reduce speed, pay attention, and give way to pedestrians crossing the street.

Not only compared with the Law on Road Traffic, Decree 46 also ensures compliance with other related laws such as the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents, the Law on Handling of Administrative Violations... Therefore, "there is something wrong" about the legality of the decree is an unfounded concern.

Two more things to note are probably the equally high fines for running red and yellow lights (according to old regulations, red lights are fined more severely than yellow) and the enforcement ability of both the people and the traffic police.

According to Lieutenant Colonel Ta Thi Hong Minh, Deputy Head of the Department of Propaganda and Dissemination of Laws on Traffic Order and Safety, Traffic Police Department (C67), Ministry of Public Security, equal fines must be imposed to change the bad habit of many people. That is, when seeing a yellow light, instead of slowing down and stopping before the stop line, they step on the gas to try to pass through a three-way or four-way intersection, causing conflicts with the flow of vehicles that are allowed to move.

Many people may not be convinced right away, but it seems that it is not easy to gather scientific evidence to refute this argument. Because the Road Traffic Law does not stipulate that running a red light is more serious, there are no statistics that running a yellow light causes less consequences, and countries around the world have different regulations on this matter...

For now, it can be agreed that to help drivers proactively calculate and reduce speed to stop before the stop line, avoiding the "dilemma", the yellow light must be accompanied by a countdown timer. This reasonable suggestion of many people needs to be promptly and fully implemented by the transportation industry.

In addition, in order for strict penalties for traffic violations, including illegal yellow light violations, to be implemented smoothly, the police need to clearly explain each arising question. Simply put, "going past the stop line" is when the body of the vehicle (the front wheel of a motorbike, the nose of many types of cars...) comes into contact with the stop line, meaning it cannot be the entire vehicle...

According to PLO