Radar love: Do automated speed cameras make cities safer?
By D. Dowd Muska | May 23, 2025
Earlier this year, San Francisco garnered national headlines when it activated California’s first “speed safety cameras.” The city-county’s ticketing tech, however, wasn’t the focus of the spotlight. Under the state law authorizing the new system, “drivers with low incomes will be able to receive a fine reduction or an opportunity for community service in lieu of a fine.”
Praised by progressives, and denounced as “communism” by one California conservative, the latest manifestation of San Francisco’s commitment to “equity” deserves a robust debate. (Why not income-sensitive parking tickets? Pet licenses? Sales taxes?) But it would be unfortunate if the program’s uniquely bifurcated penalty obscured the issue of automated speed-limit enforcement itself. Contrary to what enthusiasts claim, the case for non-human monitoring of drivers’ gas pedals is far from strong.
Activists and elected officials justify speed cameras, almost exclusively, as a means to boost safety. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie thundered that no “matter how you get around our city, you should be able to do it without fearing for your life.” Boulder, Colo., claims that its “photo enforcement devices … improve traffic safety, prevent crashes and save lives.” Albuquerque avers that “[a]utomated speed enforcement is an effective tool to make roads safer.”
But it’s not difficult to encounter research and data that reach different conclusions. In June 2024, The Washington Post reported that even though D.C. initially deployed speed cameras in 2015, traffic fatalities have “been higher … every year since and reached a 16-year zenith [in 2023] with 52 deaths.” During the same period, “[s]erious injuries related to traffic crashes increased nearly 15 percent.”
The Illinois Policy Institute cites a “decade-long city study of collisions around Chicago speed cameras” that found it was mainly a revenue-enhancing ploy. A 2013 exploration of “the effects of speed cameras along a 26 mile segment in metropolitan Phoenix,” published in Annals of Advances in Automotive Medicine, “did not show any statistical increase or decrease in total number of [motor vehicle collisions] with speed cameras.” An earlier experiment with “traffic surveys near speed vans and fixed cameras in several locations around the metropolitan Phoenix area” determined that “speed cameras do not decrease highway speeds.”
But once again, a more fundamental issue must be faced: Is it true that “speed kills”? Naderites and anti-car zealots certainly consider the assertion to be sacrosanct. But auto journalist Eric Peters considers the “assertion that ‘speeding’ is the determinative – or even correlative – factor in accidents” to be “myopic and simplistic.” The automotive writer points to a “loss of control” for traffic deaths, and “that can happen at practically any speed.” (“Glaucomic Granny at 45 is more likely to lose control than Eagle Eyed Dan at 70.”)
Even the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – which puts its imprimatur, vociferously, on the slower-is-better narrative – admits that only 28 percent “of fatal crashes … in 2022 were speeding-related.”
Still worse for Nanny Statists, despite much hullabaloo over a spike in traffic deaths during the madness of the lockdown years, the disturbing trend has reversed. Early data compiled by the Federal Highway Administration reveal that in 2024, “the fatality rate … decreased to 1.20 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.” The ratio may not be radically different than it was in 2014 (1.08), 2004 (1.44), or 1994 (1.73) – but it’s a remarkably lower figure than the results for 1984 (2.57), 1974 (3.53), 1964 (5.39), and 1954 (6.03).
And then there are the civil-liberties concerns. In 2021, the Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law warned:
Speed cameras rely on automatic license plate reader (ALPR) technology to identify the cars’ license plates and cross-reference them with DMV records in order to ticket the drivers. ALPR companies capture millions of licenses that pass them by – as many as 1,800 licenses per minute – with potentially grave implications for nationwide government surveillance. In 2020, the California State Auditor’s office conducted an audit of local law enforcement agencies’ use of ALPR and found that none of the agencies had an ALPR usage and privacy policy that complied with the state’s legally mandated security requirements.
Undaunted, California is going all-in on speed cameras – under the authorizing law, Los Angeles, San Jose, Oakland, Glendale and Long Beach are empowered to follow San Francisco’s lead. Yet beyond the Golden State, a rebellion is brewing.
Last year, Iowa’s legislators overwhelmingly approved a bill that required all counties and municipalities to seek the state Department of Transportation’s approval for any “automated or remote system for traffic law enforcement.” Local governments had to demonstrate that such systems were “appropriate and necessary and the least restrictive means to address the critical traffic safety issues at a location.”
Per Iowa Public Radio, the DOT has “rejected most cities’ requests.” (At least one is suing over its denial.) A few weeks ago, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed the Buckeye State’s transportation budget into law. It bars townships and counties from using speed-enforcement cameras. A prominent Republican lawmaker celebrated the partial end of “a form of government overreach and … an unfair burden on my constituents,” while a Democratic colleague hoped that “we can just move on with our lives on the other side of traffic cameras.”
Georgia, where one sheriff considers automated ticketing “unconstitutional as all get out,” could soon limit, or even prohibit, the much-hated speed cameras placed in many school zones. Rep. Dale Washburn, an outspoken critic, derides “the deceit and trickery” of the scheme, charging that “the design is not for children’s safety” but “to write tickets and rake in revenue.”
It’s no coincidence that the voices pushing for “traffic calming,” “complete streets,” “road diets” and “Vision Zero” adore speed cameras. When the purpose is to make driving miserable – and push urban travelers toward transit, bicycling, and walking – any tactic will do. Let’s hope more urban residents get the facts on what is being done for their “protection.”
photos © Aditya Saxena, Berkin Uregen
