Traffic Calming, Privacy, and Automated Enforcement: How Speed Cameras Help Humanize New York Infrastructure

By Emmet White

Vision Zero employees participating in community outreach. Photo originally published on www.NYC.gov

“A human-centered approach to infrastructure had all but disappeared from New York City government by the 1970s,” New York University Professor of History Kim Phillips-Fein said in her interview on The New School’s Public Seminar derived podcast, “Exiles on 12th Street.” 50 years later, with the rates of walking and cycling in New York City exponentially growing according to Vision Zero data, New York City is making small steps towards protecting human life on the city’s streets. 

In an effort to save driver and pedestrian lives, automated enforcement of speeding through cameras has proven to be effective in New York City’s school zones. New York City's traffic death rate has continually proved to be a moving target, even after the 2014 implementation of the Vision Zero traffic safety initiative. Traffic deaths gradually lessened as the 21st century moved on and the DeBlasio administration aimed to eliminate traffic deaths in adopting Vision Zero, with a record low of 200 road and sidewalk users losing their lives in traffic accidents in 2018. 

Posted at high traffic roadways within 1,320 feet of a school, NYC’s Department of Transportation has installed cameras that measure and capture the speed of each moving vehicle on the road. “NYC’s speed camera program uses the same radar and laser technology relied upon by law enforcement to measure a vehicle’s speed,” a 2018 NYC DOT report states, “If the system’s radar finds that the vehicle is exceeding the speed limit by more than ten miles per hour, images of the rear of the vehicle are recorded, including the license plate.” Following the recording of the license plate, a member of DOT staff will review the videotape and then issue a Notice of Liability (NOL) once the speed of the vehicle is verified. Critically, the cost of the fine is the same regardless of speed or repeating offense, $50. These traffic infractions are not reported to any insurer and will not become a part of one's driving record. 

Ideally, these cameras aim to influence driver behavior in school zones in an effort to limit speed, lessen crashes, and save pedestrian lives. “Because the goal of these cameras is not punishment or profit, but the deterrence and prevention of dangerous driving, there is significant potential in the expansion of non-punitive measures,” a 2020 Transportation Alternatives report titled “The Case for Self-Enforcing Streets” reads, “Automated enforcement cameras are the fairest and most efficient enforcement tool available.” And, so far, they’ve been working. 

Omar Perez, 24, of Newark, New Jersey works as a courier for Samurai Messenger Service, a Manhattan-based delivery service, and a freelance videographer, regularly commuting into and throughout the city with his bicycle and car. “I’ve gotten $150 worth of speeding tickets and now when I drive in Manhattan I always keep it under 25 miles per hour,” Perez said. From a cyclist’s perspective, Malcolm Richards, 31, of Bedford-Stuyvesant agrees, “If that driver gets caught on camera and has a ticket sent to them, they are not going to want to drive fast on the same strip of road again.” Richards commutes by bicycle every day, riding from Kosciusko Street in Bed-Stuy to Strictly Cycling Collective near Hudson Yards, and said that it can feel like drivers are playing with your life every day. In some ways, Richards believes that speed cameras play a role in creating a safer street environment

An NYC DOT report following the 2014-2017 Automated Speed Enforcement Program concurs. Amongst the findings, traffic fatalities in the enforced areas were down 55% while the total number of roadway crashes was down by 15%. These results were attributable to the behavior change in drivers inside of these camera-enforced school zones, with speeding being reduced by 63-83% in these corridors. 79% of those who were issued an initial ticket in these corridors did not receive another. In Chicago, where speed cameras have been in place for the same amount of time as in New York, the results are similar. The average speed in these camera-lined corridors of New York and Chicago has decreased by nearly a mile an hour each year since its inception while speeding in these areas has reduced by 13.5 overall. However, incentivizing speed obedience is a solution that, while producing results, doesn’t necessarily solve the structural problems at hand. 

Using cameras is a substitute to the solution that addresses the human issue at hand. Changing driver behavior is the key to achieving further road safety, this being best achieved by context-necessary road design. According to a report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, speeding is greatly influenced by a driver's comfortability with the road ahead, meaning narrower and curvier roads quell speeding. This assessment pertains to cameras in a behavioral way, the report showing that the potential for consequence significantly reduces the possibility of speeding. The ultimate consequence is a crash or collision while monetary consequences act as an intermediary with visible effect. 

Another limitation is the location of the speed cameras. New York State law prohibits traffic cameras from ticketing for traffic violations unless they’re within 1,320 feet of a school and during or within 1 hour of school sessions. This means that efforts to stop traffic accidents in New York through automated enforcement often fall under the guise of school safety as opposed to a general speeding crackdown. “These restrictions limit the effectiveness of the program because they prevent the City from using speed cameras to deter speeding at the most high-crash places and during the most high-crash times of day,” a 2018 DOT report noted. Similarly, while the cameras are unbiased arbiters, the location they are placed may not be. Transportation Alternatives points out, “As automated enforcement expands, the City of New York must continue to avoid concentrating cameras in communities of color and to pair automated enforcement with street designs that encourage safe driving and traffic law compliance.”

Only 15 of 50 states in the U.S. employ speed cameras, each state citing different concerns over privacy and unjust enforcement. As New York City worked at expanding its traffic camera fleet to 2,000, Texas was banning traffic cameras altogether and removing their existing red-light cameras, even in spite of a reduction of a third of accidents in Plano, Texas. Even in New York, Jennifer Lynch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation raised concerns about the data retention of these cameras during their inception, citing that the data stored from these cameras will be retained for up to 5 years. “Law enforcement may retain license plate data — which includes the location, time and date a plate is photographed — for up to five years,” Lynch wrote in The New York Times, “By compiling data on a given plate, a cop can know where you’ve been and when and can target certain neighborhoods, organizations or houses of worship or place political activists on hotlists so that their movements set off alerts.”  Even the fiercest advocates of pedestrian safety, like Transportation Alternatives, agree that privacy is paramount here. 

As the New York City camera system continually grows into its title as the largest in the world, with 950 active cameras and 1,050 on the way according to the DOT, the number of deaths on New York City streets should continue to fall. City politicians, like City Councilmember Brad Lander, campaign with traffic safety as a key issue. “We should strategically deploy and expand the City’s network of red-light and school speed zone cameras, which have been proven to reduce speeding, crashes, injuries, and deaths,” Lander writes on his Comptroller campaign page. And while an increased focus on automated enforcement will likely prove effective, those living and working in the most vulnerable area may stay at a greater risk of traffic violence. “5 out of every 6 New Yorkers who are killed or severely injured are struck at times or places where the law prohibits the use of speed cameras to deter speeding,” the DOT report states. Working cyclists, like veteran bike messenger Jim Gilbert, share this experience. “Every time I’ve been hit by a car, I’d hardly say it was speeding and I still got fucked up,” Gilbert said, “Getting doored? Forget about it.” In order for the aim of Vision Zero, zero traffic deaths in a New York City year, to become a reality, it will take more than cameras in school zones. With their hands tied by the State Legislature, the DOT’s left to install cameras in every school zone possible or redesign their streets.