The US Department of Transportation is considering a proposal to outlaw DC’s automated traffic enforcement cameras. The 546 cameras operating in the District capture images of scofflaw drivers and issue penalties for reckless speeding, blowing past stop signs and red lights, and other violations. They are an essential tool for disincentivizing this behavior, and they work.

But the Politico story that broke the news of the DOT’s attempt to squash the District’s right to enact penalties for traffic safety violations focused mainly on the implications for the District’s budget.

The cameras save lives

Traffic safety advocates, including GGWash, support automated traffic enforcement (ATE) because there’s abundant evidence that it reduces reckless driving. In the two years since DC significantly expanded its camera program, the District has enjoyed its first reduction in traffic fatalities and injuries since Mayor Bowser introduced the Vision Zero initiative a decade ago.

Drivers killed half as many people last year as they did in 2024. With available evidence, we can’t attribute that change directly to ATE. But triangulated with data that it’s had positive effects on safety elsewhere, the implications are reasonably clear that ATE reduces reckless driving.

I’ve received two of these penalties in my 11 years in DC, once near RFK Stadium where I-295 dumps drivers onto lower-speed local roads with a limited transition, and once on Bladensburg Road (no excuse for that one, just thankful that my mistake only cost money). A penalty can make you think twice about how your behavior affects the world and people around you.

When a reckless driver potentially fleeing a police traffic stop killed a pedestrian just this week on 16th and L St NW, it underscored the tremendous need for more enforcement, not less. The fact that the driver felt comfortable driving around downtown DC in the same vehicle that was recently involved in a hit-and-run highlights how limited our enforcement system really is. Now’s obviously not the time to pull back even further.

Thanks, but no thanks

The Politico story did us all a service in breaking news of DOT’s nefarious proposal, because if it comes to pass it will make all of us less safe. But it did us a disservice in framing this as solely a problem for the District’s budget. It’s also a problem because it threatens to undermine a successful tool at keeping pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists safe on our streets.

The revenues were supposed to go to traffic safety

Unfortunately, District government itself gave Politico – and indeed any skeptical drivers who want to keep on blowing those lights, lives around them be damned – plenty of reason to look first to the budget implications. When ATE had a major expansion in the District in 2020, the idea was to dedicate the revenues to funding Vision Zero and other transportation initiatives, stipulated by the Council’s Vision Zero Enhancement Omnibus Amendment Act.

What Mayor Bowser did instead was to sweep those funds not into traffic safety or indeed any transportation initiatives, but into the general revenue fund to be used for any random purpose.

So no wonder it looks like a cash grab. When our local executive elected official clearly sees it that way, we cannot be surprised when national journalists and Trump appointees see it that way as well. The Mayor’s response to the DOT’s plan that “removing [automated traffic enforcement] cameras would endanger people in our community” can’t defend us. She immediately follows up with noting: “In addition to the public safety implications, removing the cameras would also create a $1 billion hole in DC’s financial plan, which would mean cuts to everyday city services”—a problem made wicked by her own budgeting.

A partly-hijacked program that’s still necessary

Would the skeptics – good and bad faith – still see automated enforcement as a cash grab if the Mayor hadn’t, ahem, grabbed the cash that was meant for safety? Maybe, probably. But we didn’t have to give them another reason.

I don’t know what will happen with DOT’s proposal, which places so much more value on 60 seconds saved by a driver who blows a stoplight than it does on human lives. I do know that our system should both penalize reckless driving and use the revenues to invest in safety measures, like ATE’s backers on the Council intended. But we still need those cameras to make drivers think twice about endangering lives.

Top image: Traffic speed camera on K Street NW under Washington Circle. Image by BeyondDC used with permission.

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