Myrtle Beach Legal Blog

City planners do not usually erect traffic signals simply for the sake of doing so. On the contrary, these lights control the flow of traffic and keep motorists safe. While a recent AAA survey found that 43% of responders admitted to running a red light in the 30 days before the survey, most motorists recognize the importance of stopping when a traffic light turns red. 

Alarmingly, the number of fatal collisions at red lights is on an upward swing. Not all drivers have the same likelihood of disregarding traffic signals, though. Instead, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reports that most red-light runners share some common features. 

In Florida and across the country, an increasing number of Americans, especially young people, have been arrested. In fact, young people are much more likely to be arrested than they were in generations past. This comes despite the fact that violent crime has been dropping for decades. However, researchers note that while arrests may seem less necessary than in the past, police may be more likely to turn to arrests and criminal charges for relatively petty matters. Criminal arrests, charges and convictions can interfere with a person's ability to gain employment, education and housing for many years to come, so the increasing arrest rate is of concern to many.

According to a RAND Corporation research paper, people are more likely to be arrested before the age of 26. While only 6.4% of people born before 1949 have been arrested, 23% of those born between 1979 and 1988 can say the same. The majority of these arrests apparently do not involve violent crime or even property damage. It is not always clear what the charges are, but it is clear that the issues do not rise to the level of felony charges in many cases. For example, 28% of arrested men and 31% of arrested women are accused of "other misdemeanors," a catch-all category.

The vast majority of the drivers recently polled by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety said that running through a red light is extremely dangerous. However, almost one in three of them admitted to doing just that in the previous 30 days. This kind of cognitive dissonance is not uncommon in traffic safety studies. In fact, analysts suspect that it's one of the reasons why the number of fatal accidents involving red-light runners has recently surged in South Carolina and across the U.S.

Accidents involving red-light running claimed 989 lives in 2017, according to government crash data. In 65% of these cases, the road user killed was struck by the offending driver. The annual red-light running death toll has risen by a worrying 30% since 2012, and many senior police officials believe that distraction and cellphone use are largely responsible. Cars going over 45 mph cover a distance of about 100 yards in just a few seconds, which is why looking at a cellphone screen instead of the road is so dangerous.

In some cases, police or prosecutors in South Carolina and other states will engage in misconduct that wrongfully sends a defendant to prison. However, researchers from Texas State University say that defendants are wrongfully convicted based on a variety of other factors. For instance, police may develop tunnel vision after identifying the individual who they believe likely committed the crime. Instead of objectively viewing the evidence, authorities may try to make it fit their narrative.

If a case is featured prominently in the news, authorities may have a greater incentive to show that they have found whoever committed the crime in question. In one case, a teenager spent 16 years in prison after police got him to falsely confess to committing rape. In 2006, he was freed after DNA evidence cleared him of the crime. According to a member of the Innocence Project, this was an example of how the goal of a typical interrogation is to get someone to admit to a crime.