PHOENIX — A 60-year-old man is dead after Phoenix police say a teen driver ran a red light over the weekend.
It happened at 35th Avenue and Union Hills Drive late Saturday night. According to police, the teen driver ran a red light driving west on Union Hills Drive and hit Mark Oale, who was driving south on 35th Avenue. Oale died from his injuries.
The latest data from the Arizona Department of Transportation show that in 2020, 4,900 crashes were caused by a driver running a red light in Arizona. In total, 69 people died in those crashes.
While some cities do have red-light cameras, the Phoenix City Council did not renew the cameras three years ago.
Recently, however, Phoenix is considering whether implementing new yellow-light timing standards would help make signalized intersections safer by helping to reduce red-light running.
"One of the most serious issues at our signalized intersections is red-light running," Kini Knudson, the director for Phoenix's Street Transportation Department, told a council subcommittee in January.
The standards come from the Institute of Transportation Engineers' (ITE) 2020 guidelines.
While the City of Phoenix denied 12News' request for an interview on the subject Monday, according to the subcommittee meeting and a policy session meeting with Phoenix City Council, the city is partnering with the University of Arizona to study the effectiveness of the new standards.
Starting last year, the city chose 12 intersections to monitor as part of the study. First, examining at each intersection how many drivers ran red lights at each intersection under the current yellow-light timing standards, and then after extending the yellow-light times.
As of January, before the study was completed, city staff told councilmembers the results are promising based on three of the 12 intersections being looked at.
"We are seeing about a 50 percent reduction with the implementation of the ITE guidelines," said Briiana Velez, Phoenix's Street Transportation assistant director.
12News is told an update on the results is supposed to come before the council later this spring.
One piece city staff are keeping an eye on is if driver behavior changes and stays that way long-term.
"What tends to happen is drivers' behaviors - they notice differences, right? And then it changes their behavior again," Velez said.