How Automatic Traffic Enforcement Disproportionately Targets Drivers Of Color

Source: The Washington Post / Getty

In roughly five months (October 2023 through Feb. 29, 2024), Washington D.C. brought in $54 million in tickets from traffic cameras. Despite her assertion that this revenue was a surprise benefit, in early 2023, Mayor Browser had already allocated an expected  $578 million in ATE revenue to address a budget shortfall. Establishing an annual reliance on money generated by such programs makes our government dependent on the very thing the cameras purport to reduce– speeding. And it does so by disproportionately ticketing drivers of color who have been failed by infrastructure investment for generations.

Washington D.C. is not alone in aggressively pursuing Automatic Traffic Enforcement, or ATE, technologies. Between 2012 and 2022, speed camera programs alone increased 40 percent. This year, we have already seen 28 state bills proposing the implementation or expansion of ATE programs — most of which fail to address any of the well-documented harms of these programs, including racial inequities. This uptick is surely tied to the US Department of Transportation’s recent grants and programs that incentivize jurisdictions to increase their use of ATE. Many of these come without guidance or guardrails to ensure they are achieving safety objectives and not just generating revenue.   

If implemented correctly within ATE, the deployment of Automatic Speed Enforcement (ASE) may have the potential for positive impact on speed-related traffic safety. But at best, it is just one component of a street safety plan. Not all ATE is created equal. Studies show that the outcomes for red light cameras, for example, vary, and there have yet to be any consistent, significant results. In fact, several studies suggest that while red-light cameras may reduce t-bone crashes, they can contribute to increased rear-end collisions. Data on ticketing and traffic stops overall is similarly lacking, and what does exist routinely shows little or short-term impact of enforcement efforts. 

Jurisdictions also routinely attribute the efficacy of their traffic safety program by conflating a full-fledged safe system change (measures like improved infrastructure and road redesign, better lighting, or better signage) with the mere imposition of cameras. For example, D.C.’s Department of Transportation held up the camera at Wheeler Road Southeast as a prime example of “ATE cameras working.” Still, the truth is that the location had major investments in traffic-calming measures. It wasn’t cameras alone that made safer roads, it was better design. Cities like D.C. cannot in earnest claim to be realizing Vision Zero — which requires systems-level changes to save lives — when their main strategy is to put up cameras.

Source: The Washington Post / Getty

The driving force behind America’s enforcement-first, or more often enforcement-only, approach is due in large part to the lucrative fines and fees attached to ATE. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson chose to balance this year’s budget with $348 million coming from primarily traffic-related fines and fees, an increase of 15% from the previous year. These fines and fees disproportionately impact low-income and minority communities. In just five months, Chicago’s program raised $55 million in late fees alone.

Jurisdictions, swayed by the revenue they yield, have become focused on implementing as many monetary sanctions as possible into their traffic “safety” programs. But monetary sanctions — or excessive fines and fees — do not create safer streets.  All you have to do is follow the money. If these programs were actually changing behavior, we would see revenue decline because people would be driving more safely and incurring fewer infractions. Yet, the reality is that jurisdictions across the country are banking on revenue staying the same. At the end of the day, it’s not about changing behavior as much as it is about balancing the budget. Ask anyone who’s received a ticket in Chicago for going 6 mph over the speed limit.

A fine-based, enforcement-first approach doesn’t just fail to meet safety goals, and it also fails communities. Over the last decade, while ATE has been steadily growing,  1 in 3 Americans have been impacted by fine and fee debt; with the majority of these debts stemming from traffic infractions. At the same time, fatal traffic crashes reached a  40-year high in 2022. For people living paycheck to paycheck, trying to pay off a single traffic ticket and its associated fees can mean forgoing food, rent, and childcare. 

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Fine-based ATE parallels and magnifies the same racial disparities seen in traffic policing, with low-income and Black and Latino communities being the primary targets of ATE citations. These programs also disproportionately punish people who live in neighborhoods that have been historically disinvested and that have less safe roads, leading to dangerous driving and crashes.       

While government leaders like DC’s Mayor Browser continue to claim public safety as justification, we know better. The recent report by the Fines and Fees Justice Center provides policymakers with a comprehensive look at the full range of impacts ATE technologies have on communities, policing incentives, and budgets — all of which should be considered when any form of ATE is being proposed. The report also provides policy guidance mitigating the harms of ATE  (such as by directing any budget revenue to one-time infrastructure projects) and creating a holistic traffic safety solution that prioritizes saving and improving lives over balancing budgets.

If your goal is to change behavior, you cannot literally bank on it staying the same. If policymakers are serious about traffic safety, we need to see investments in our communities, such as better signage, speed bumps, quick builds, and roundabouts. Policymakers that choose to lead with enforcement, and link that enforcement to revenue, are choosing to risk the lives and livelihoods of the people they are purporting to protect just to raise a dollar. And that begs the question, what are we actually trying to achieve? 

The Center for Policing Equity (CPE) and Fines and Fees Justice Center (FFJC) collaborated in drafting the above op-ed to highlight the increased presence of Automatic Traffic Enforcement, which creates a disproportionate burden on drivers, particularly Black communities. Scarlet Neath, Policy Director at the Center for Policing Equity & Priya Sarathy Jones, Deputy Executive Director at the Fines and Fees Justice Center

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