Study: Speed Camera Citations Correlate to Safe Infrastructure

A study from New York City indicates that, while automated traffic enforcement cameras are evenly distributed across the city's neighborhoods, safe roadways and pedestrian infrastructure are not. As Julianne Cuba and Brian Howald report, "A new map created by activist Brian Howald shows where in the city drivers are getting nabbed for speeding in school zones and blowing through red lights, revealing a pattern of inequity not based on the location of the cameras themselves, but where the city has failed to provide adequate infrastructure that protects vulnerable road users."

Yes, the cameras are evenly distributed geographically in the city, but many tickets are issued in many communities of color because of the wide, speedway-like arterials that cut through such neighborhoods, and which have not been redesigned by the city for safety as they have been in White neighborhoods. The result is not only many speeding tickets written in communities of color, but also that residents of those neighborhoods are disproportionately the victims of road violence, advocates say.

This sheds light on the controversial devices and the argument over whether they unfairly target particular communities, signaling that, as pointed out in a recent ProPublica article, infrastructure—such as wide streets that encourage speeding—matters when it comes to driver behavior and road safety. Cuba and Howald's article quotes lawmakers and activists who want to see automated enforcement coupled with investment in safer roadways. "Such senseless deaths unfortunately happen far too often in our city, but they can be easily prevented with investment in more protective pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure," wrote state Senator Julia Salazar last year.