NICK’S VIEW - Reliable data from Los Angeles Police Department reports show that over the past decade traffic enforcement has fallen by more than eighty percent. Regrettably, as enforcement declines drivers increasingly treat traffic rules as optional.
Here we face a double whammy: weak governance is compounded by a breakdown in public behavior, leaving city institutions unable to maintain the basic conditions for safe streets.
After years of contributing to Los Angeles’ growth and well-being, I am deeply saddened to see this decline. The failure of traffic safety is like a preventable tragedy unfolding in slow motion. Without question, this crisis can be reversed, but only if leaders act with the urgency and courage that protecting human life requires.
Last November and again in February (CitywatchLA: Red Light Running-Nov 10,2025 - To Stop Los Angeles` Traffic Carnage-Feb 02,2026) I wrote in this space that Los Angeles is facing a public safety crisis in the form of an epidemic of red light running and other traffic violations, which are dramatically increasing fatalities and injuries on city streets. This is not just about reckless drivers; it reflects failures in collective responsibility and governance that demand urgent, forceful attention.
Earlier this month the Los Angeles Times with a headline "Traffic deaths are on the rise", reported that the number of Angelenos who die in traffic crashes now regularly outpaces those killed by homicide. From 2016 to 2023, the annual traffic death toll rose nearly 29% overall, and pedestrian deaths jumped roughly 54%. Fatal crashes fell slightly last year, but deaths still exceeded 300 in each of the last three years.
Every death on our streets is tragic, but red-light running should not be accepted as an unavoidable part of city life. It is an avoidable danger, and we have the tools to address it. When someone runs a signal, the resulting deaths are not accidents — they are failures we can fix.
It is my experience that government failure erodes public behavior because institutions shape the norms people follow. When institutions weaken, those norms weaken too. And when rules go unenforced, people stop believing they matter.
Red-light running is, in great part, a response to weak enforcement. With enforcement sharply reduced, drivers know they are unlikely to be observed or cited. Without red-light cameras, they adjust their behavior accordingly. Higher approach speeds make the problem worse by making it harder, both physically and mentally, to stop when the light changes.
And speed is the most crucial factor because it intensifies every other risk. It makes drivers more likely to misjudge yellow-light timing and take dangerous chances.
Distracted drivers also fail to notice a light change because they are looking at their phones, reading messages, using navigation apps, or talking. Even a one-second lapse can send a driver into the intersection after the signal has turned red.
Further, one of the most dangerous categories is impaired driving due to alcohol or drugs because such impairment often coincides with high speed. Reaction time and judgment are destroyed, yellow light timing is misjudged, and some never even see the light at all.
A damnable act is the culture of intentional red‑light running: drivers try to “beat the light,” refuse to wait because they are late, weave through lanes, or treat the signal as optional.
City leaders can address these dangers only by restoring the civic conditions that make safe behavior possible, beginning with a renewed expectation of discipline on the streets. From a civic perspective, the rising toll of traffic deaths reflects a failure of leadership and institutional responsibility. When enforcement collapses, when dangerous corridors go years without redesign, when agencies operate in isolation, and when preventable dangers like red‑light running are allowed to persist, it is fair to say that city leaders, including the Mayor Karen Bass and her challenger Councilmember Nithya Raman, the City Council and the LAPD, in my view, have not met the level of urgency the crisis demands.
These deaths are foreseeable, and that is precisely why I see them so morally unbearable. LA’s own data shows persistent red‑light‑running clusters, in other words, where the same intersections produce the same kinds of deaths year after year. This makes them predictable and intolerable.
It has been documented by many sources that LAPD is far less proactive than it used to be. In 2019, officers made about 713,000 stops across the city; by 2025, that number had decreased to roughly 308,000 — a 57% decline. An LA Times analysis of police stop data found that the drop-off was especially pronounced in the Central, West Valley, 77th Street and Southeast police divisions.
Los Angeles can stop this carnage by acting boldly now. The mayor already has the authority, programs, and proven tools to make streets safer, including full-scale automated speed enforcement. Under AB 645, Los Angeles may install up to 125 speed-safety cameras, and full deployment means using them all — not as a small pilot or symbolic gesture, but as a citywide system that slows drivers before they reach intersections. LA has not yet installed and activated all 125 cameras.
These cameras should be placed along corridors where red-light running and fatal crashes are concentrated, operated consistently, paired with clear public messaging, and coordinated with redesigned signals and targeted enforcement. When automated enforcement is visible and active, speeding declines, red-light running decreases, and fatal crashes fall.
I am deeply committed to this issue, so let me be clear: when a danger is foreseeable, City Hall and the police cannot dismiss the consequences of accidents or claim ignorance. Predictable danger demands accountability, and inaction is indefensible. Foreseeable risks impose an urgent duty on the city because preventable deaths require immediate correction, not prolonged study. What is needed now is leadership with the urgency that protecting human life requires.
The promise printed on every LAPD patrol car — "To Protect and To Serve" — means little, if City Hall and the police continue to delay action, while Angelenos die on predictable corridors.
Los Angeles has reached the point where delay is indistinguishable from indifference. City leaders can no longer hesitate in confronting red‑light‑running fatalities, because these deaths are not random tragedies but the foreseeable result of a policy vacuum that has allowed dangerous driving to continue unchecked.
My safety, my family’s safety and that of my fellow Angelenos is more important than reciting public officials' attendance records.
I say this from personal knowledge and commitment: a city that prides itself on innovation cannot treat preventable deaths as the price of political caution. Los Angeles has a clear moral and civic duty to act decisively, implement proven data-driven interventions, and make its intersections safe enough for people to cross without fear.
Back in November, I suggested to Mayor Bass to declare the red light running a PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY. Sadly, she has failed to act so far. It is high time that our city leaders act now, before another traffic fatality becomes a tragic, but avoidable statistic.
(Nick Patsaouras is an electrical engineer, civic leader, and a longtime public advocate. He ran for Mayor in 1993 with a focus on rebuilding L.A. through transportation after the 1992 civil unrest. He has served on major public boards, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Metro, and the Board of Zoning Appeals, helping guide infrastructure and planning policy in Los Angeles. He is the author of the book "The Making of Modern Los Angeles.")
