Traffic Signals

Watchdog, a new weekly feature, makes its debut Tuesday. It holds government agencies accountable for problems occurring in neighborhoods, such as missing street signs, broken water mains, traffic signals or street lights burned out. Please call us at 410-332-6735 and leave a message or e-mail us at watchdog@baltsun.com. A reporter and a photographer might contact you to follow up on your complaint.

Carroll Circuit Judge Luke K. Burns Jr. was not amused by William Edward Raczkowski's little prank of switching off the traffic signals at the intersection of Route 140 and Sandymount Road last March.In finding the 19-year-old high school dropout guilty of one count of reckless endangerment yesterday, Judge Burns said that by playing with the signals, Mr. Raczkowski "did, without any doubt, create a substantial risk to a lot of people."So, for two nights, Mr. Raczkowski was ordered to spend time in the Carroll County Detention Center.

Another state road project aimed at smoothing the path to the Eastern Shore is under way outside Annapolis.The $7.7 million job will eliminate traffic signals at the intersection of Old Mill Bottom Road and Route 50/301 and Cape St. Claire Road and Route 50/301, replacing them with bridges, said Ernest Hodshon, assistant district engineer with the State Highway Administration. After the projects are completed in 1993, there will be no traffic signals on Route 50/301 west of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Hodshon said.

More than a year ago, Howard County's Traffic Engineering Division ordered $69,000 worth of sensors to trip traffic signals for county rescue vehicles.But now, C. Edward Walter, head of the division, says he doesn't have the staffing to install the devices.The State Highway Administration says the county can't use them on state roads because they differ from a state-approved system used in every other Maryland jurisdiction. The county was supposed to submit a study on the new system in hopes of winning state approval to use it, but the traffic department now says it doesn't have enough employees to pull together that report.

A class action lawsuit challenging Baltimore's red-light-camera tickets, maintaining in part that the timing of traffic signals' yellow lights had been too short and resulted in fraudulent citations, has been dismissed by a city Circuit Court judge. The three plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit in August 2004 contended that the traffic signals in their cases had yellow lights lasting less than 3 seconds. One of the plaintiffs says 4 seconds is the standard. Violations carry a $75 fine but no points.