As our regular readers know, when it comes to the issue of motor vehicle safety, we take a back seat (pun intended) to no one.
However, we believe that the budget put forward by Gov. Maura Healey that would allow local and state authorities to place traffic speed cameras on our roadways is misguided.
In a nutshell, the legislation provides that tickets for $25 may be issued to persons operating 11 miles or more over the speed limit and $100 to those driving more than 25 over the limit. A first offense within any two-year period would result in a warning. In addition, the tickets would not go on a person’s driving record for insurance purposes. They would essentially be the same as a parking ticket.
Our objections are as follows:
First, state law requires that, absent exigent circumstances, a police officer must issue a citation for a moving infraction at the time and place of the violation. This ensures that the officer is giving the citation to the person who is committing the violation. However, the traffic cameras only will be capturing a license plate, which means that the ticket will be sent to the registered owner without regard to whether the owner was actually the operator of the vehicle. If your child (or spouse, friend, or somebody else) is speeding in your car, you’re stuck with the ticket and the hassle of trying to prove your innocence.
Second, local authorities (who are limited to installing one camera per 5000 of population in their communities) presumably will be installing these cameras on their most heavily-traveled roadways. However, this invariably means that non-residents, who may not be familiar with the speed limit on those roads, will be the ones who will be subject to getting a ticket. This will be doubly true because the speed limits on almost every local road in this state are poorly-marked and often change (up or down) without warning. In some communities, there is a discreet sign at the entrance to the town that the speed limit in that community is 25 m.p.h. “unless posted otherwise.” Given the scattershot nature of speed limit postings across the state’s 351 cities and towns, issuing speeding tickets based on a camera will be inherently unfair and arbitrary.
Third, the cameras will not deter those drivers who are the real problem: Habitual traffic offenders who speed excessively on a routine basis. In fact, the cameras will give them a green light (again, pun intended) to speed. If the tickets under the new system will have no real consequences for either their license or their insurance premiums, these habitual offenders will be able to drive as they like with impunity. For the juvenile-minded members of the Fast and Furious crowd, the ticket will not even be a slap on the wrist.
And that brings us to our fourth problem with the new law: Relying on traffic cameras to enforce the traffic laws on the main roads in our state will make our roadways less safe. Traffic stops by police officers do not merely deter unsafe drivers, but they also remove from our roads persons who have suspended licenses, court warrants, vehicles that are unregistered and uninsured, and drivers who are under the influence — 40 percent of speeding drivers in fatal crashes had a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent or above. A camera will address none of those issues — leaving criminals and those under the influence to operate on our roads without fear of the possible consequences.
More broadly, if communities take the cheap way out, so to speak, by replacing officers with cameras, the entire community will be a lot less safe. We realize that every city and town in the state will soon be facing major budget issues and that many cities also are having a hard time filling the ranks of their police departments, but there is no substitute for having police officers patrolling our streets. In our view, if these cameras begin to replace police officers, our communities will be far less safe.
Finally, there is no doubt that most of these speed camera tickets will be issued to otherwise law-abiding and safe drivers, including many seniors, who might happen to exceed by a few miles the statutory threshold for a few seconds. We are being only semi-facetious in suggesting that drivers who obsessively are watching their speedometers and looking for changes in speed limit signs will add immeasurably to the plague of distracted driving. Driving 11 miles over the speed limit on most of our roadways is not unsafe, but the new law would punish normal everyday driving behavior.
But we have a better suggestion: If our state officials want to introduce traffic cameras, we think they should do so at red light intersections. More than 1100 persons nationwide, of whom half were pedestrians and bicyclists, were killed (and more than 100,000 were injured) in 2022 by motor vehicle operators who ran red lights. Statistics show that red light cameras reduce serious accidents of the horrific “T-bone” variety by 25 percent (although there is some evidence that rear-end accidents may increase).
Large, clear signage at every red light intersection proclaiming that cameras are in use would be a huge deterrent to anyone who might be tempted to run a red light (i.e., every driver on the road).
In addition, by requiring that communities must conform the light signalizations on their local roads to nationally-accepted standards, this will make intersections safer for everybody.
So we urge our legislators, if they are inclined to introduce traffic cameras in Massachusetts, to allow these devices to be placed at red light intersections in order to achieve the goal of improving roadway safety with the least amount of intrusion upon everyday, law-abiding citizens.