WASHINGTON, D. C. (Wednesday, September 26, 2018) –– Give or take a few, there are 171,476 words in current use in the English language. A million motorists are running out of words to describe their visceral reaction to the number of speed camera tickets, including the ones they got, and the stacks upon stacks of money the District derived from those citations during 2017. Breaking all records, the District handed down over one million speed camera tickets and gleaned just over one hundred million dollars in speed camera fine revenue for its coffers, during Fiscal Year 2017. Now the city is on pace to shatter that record during FY 2018, which ends September 30. Since Fiscal Year 2007, the District has issued 6.6 million photo-enforced speeding citations and generated nearly $647 million in speed camera ticket revenue. The sum of it all has left hundreds of thousands of motorists speechless and rendered untold others gobsmacked or utterly astonished.

This issue could surface in a District Council public roundtable slated for tomorrow, Thursday, September 27, on the implementation of the Mayor’s Vision Zero Initiative, which calls for a huge spike in traffic fines. Then there is growing concern that such programs are systemically taking “money from the pockets of poor people.” Research by the D.C. Policy Center reveals “predominately black neighborhoods” and communities of color in the District “bear the brunt of automated traffic enforcement.” Nearly 20 years after the city implemented its 24/7 speed-camera program, 1,079,878 drivers, a record-breaking number, were nailed by bots for speeding, and the city deposited a record $104 million in fine proceeds into its general fund in FY17. Despite the record-shattering figures and fines hitting the “hip-pocket nerve,” it was not enough to compel fewer drivers to slow down. Amid some city residents support for speed cameras runs high. Supporters of the technology say motorists are “less likely to speed in communities where speed cameras are deployed.”

“The District’s speed camera program appears to defy the law of inertia, which posits ‘what goes up, must come down.’ Instead of decreasing with each passing year, as proscribed, motorists have witnessed a fivefold amplification in speed-camera tickets and a concomitant fourfold boost in fine revenue in the District since FY 2007,” said John B. Townsend II, AAA Mid-Atlantic’s Manager of Public and Government Affairs. “It also appears to operate in defiance of a fundamental principle of speed-camera programs, which promises to reduce crash and casualty rates, as well as the number of speeding infractions over a period of time. Many motorists are wondering if the dramatic increases in tickets and revenue totals are the result of the placement of speed cameras along roadways where the posted speed is so low as to engender violations or too low, in violation of established traffic-safety and traffic engineering tenets. They wonder whether this constitutes a revenue-raising speed trap under the patina of traffic safety. Some ticketed motorists harbor that suspicion.”

The District’s juggernaut of speed cameras nabbed one million motorists in FY 2017, the highest tally in the annals of the city’s automated photo enforcement program. This tops the short-lived, yet record-breaking, ticket output totals realized in FY 2016, when the city issued 994,163 speed camera citations. The number of speed camera tickets increased nearly nine percent from FY 2016 to FY 2017. AAA Mid-Atlantic obtained the data through a FOIA request. For perspective, the FY 2016 speed camera ticket tally was nearly double the number of tickets issued the previous financial year, FY 2015. The city’s ticketing prowess was also on display in the financial realm. The city’s coffers reaped a windfall of $103,948,666 in speed camera revenue during FY 2017, compared to a revenue stream of $99,186,736 during FY 2016. This represents a five percent increase in speed camera fine revenue from the previous budget cycle. Given the epic ticketing in the current fiscal year ending September 30, it is likely the District will dish out a million or so photo tickets in FY 2018, once again resulting in optimal revenue totals. For most drivers, this track record refutes claims that the number of speeding violations in the city has dropped since the District implemented the program in 2001.

The District is rolling out a new generation of speed cameras equipped with “advanced detection technology,” such as a “three-dimensional (3D) tracking radar.” Perched high on poles and near treetops, and above the sight line of drivers, the live streaming speed camera spins out “high-resolution images, and high-definition video” of speeding vehicles. Nearly a third of speed camera tickets are issued to motorists caught speeding one mile per hour over the threshold speed that triggers the flash of the speed camera. Some critics decry the city’s program as a revenue generator, pointing to 6.6 million tickets and $647 million in revenue since FY07 as evidence. “Has the cat got your tongue?” The thought of it all is enough to cause some motorists to slip into a “tip-of-the-tongue state,” as some clinicians style it. In layman’s terms, it is a panicky form of cognitive failure that occurs when the brain temporarily freezes and fails to retrieve or recall words stored in your memory, even though such words were at your command mere moments earlier.

The chairs of two powerful District Council committees will hold a joint public roundtable at 1:30 P.M. tomorrow, Thursday, September 27, to hear testimony on deploying the Mayor’s Vision Zero Initiative, and the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Amendment Act. Behind the scene, Svengali-like speed camera peddlers, including American Traffic Solutions (ATS), which has a $6,822,042 sole source contract with the District, are urging communities to make traffic safety cameras and sensors “the technological centerpiece of any Vision Zero initiative.” Is it any wonder that across the country the Vision Zero Initiative has come under fire from some community activists who chide the plan as “ineffective and exacerbates existing inequities.”

As for the nation’s capital, “Drivers in predominately black neighborhoods receive more moving violations and higher fines,” according to research conducted by William Farrell of the D.C. Policy Center.  Farrell’s research “found that drivers in black-segregated neighborhoods receive double the average number of moving violations per capita, while drivers within white-segregated areas receive just one eighth the average.” This suggests, Farrell writes, “that the racial geography of D.C. does play into in the enforcement of traffic violations: census tracts with higher proportions of black residents are associated with a higher incidence of traffic fines, despite not experiencing a greater number of crashes.”

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