Automated Traffic Enforcement Is More Popular Than You Think
Cameras that ticket drivers who run red lights and speed are effective and widely popular with city residents. So why are they banned in so many places?
A sign alerting drivers to speed cameras in a school zone in Albany, NY.
Photographer: Will Waldron/Albany Times Union via Getty Images
If you follow local news, you might imagine that only an avaricious bureaucrat could ever support cameras that snap pictures of drivers who break traffic laws.
A Toronto Star article in July examined “the most hated speed camera in Toronto,” while a June segment on Staten Island, New York’s SILive described one that seething drivers dubbed “the moneymaker.” Earlier this year, a headline from KTBS in Shreveport, Louisiana noted that “traffic cameras spark continued controversy,” but if so, it appeared remarkably one-sided: The news segment noted that “hundreds of drivers say they’ve been wrongly ticketed” and quoted two local lawmakers who criticized automatic traffic enforcement but not a single voice defending it.