The Mailbox: Can traffic cameras make our streets safer?

Editor’s Note: We received an email asking for our opinion on traffic cameras and their role in making streets safer and more walkable. Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn offers his insights on the matter below, as well as his approach to slowing down traffic.

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Dear Chuck,

I listened with great interest to your recent conversation with Beth Osborne. In passing, you both mentioned that traffic cameras have a place in addressing our "dangerous by design" streets. I would appreciate a little bit more of your thoughts on this. I'll explain why.

As a member of a city council, I have been engaged in a community-wide discussion over the restructuring of the police department. As part of that effort, I have been supportive of deploying traffic cameras as part of a more comprehensive "safe streets/walkable city" initiative. That initiative, by reducing the need for police enforcement of traffic laws, would also benefit our Black residents, who—based on our traffic stop data—are disproportionately stopped while driving.

At the same time, the state legislature is considering banning the use of traffic cameras. The [American Civil Liberties Union] has jumped on that bandwagon from a civil rights perspective. Unfortunately, this focus on automated traffic enforcement has drawn attention away from the more important issue of making our streets safer and more welcoming for everyone. Traffic cameras are a relatively small part of a "safer by design/walkable city" strategy. Nevertheless, that role has value, especially if all aspects of their use are equitably addressed.

Thanks for your advocacy on this and so many other aspects of the strong, walkable city. The situation here has been rough as we're getting hammered by elements on the left and the right in our response.

Best wishes,

John 

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Image via Flickr user Dave Dugdale.

Thank you, John. I feel compelled to repeat something I find myself saying quite often: It’s one thing to share ideas and insights in theory but quite another to work through all the complexity in a real situation. I’ll do my best with the former, but want to acknowledge that you, by far, have the more difficult job. I applaud you for having your heart in the right place and for being courageous enough to recognize that this is not a simple matter.

As things sit right now, I find myself more in line with the ACLU on this one. Considering my own city, I cannot identify a situation where automated enforcement would make anything appreciably safer, at least from a traffic standpoint. We’re just not ready.

That begs the question: What would it look like to “be ready” for automated enforcement? It would be a community where such enforcement addressed behavior that is truly deviant and dangerous, actions that pose a real threat to the public health, safety, and welfare. A few years ago, I called for the end of the routine traffic stop, and I noted that:

….the decision to pull someone over is wholly discretionary. The police routinely sit outside my office where a wide stroad takes a twisty corner (i.e. a perfect speed trap position) because they can pull people over all day, every day. There is one specific scene from one of my favorite all time YouTube videos (Speed Kills Your Pocketbook) where the police officer is running radar and everyone is speeding. If traffic enforcement is about enforcing the law, period, then police would just pull people over continuously. Nonstop. 24/7

The corner outside my office is a clear safety problem. Drivers speed and it is very dangerous. The police occasionally sit there, and when they do, they pull over a lot of people and write a lot of speeding tickets, but it doesn’t change the fact that people speed there. In other words, the enforcement is not a deterrent the way some may think it is.

That is because, in the words of behavioral psychologist Daniel Kahneman, driving is mostly a System 1 activity, one where our brains are passively engaged. Most people in most situations will drive the speed they feel comfortable driving, regardless of the designated speed limit. Putting a speed camera on the street in front of my office might catch a lot of people speeding, but it would not make things safer. To improve safety, we need to really slow speeds down.

Slowing speeds means redesign; we need to send a different set of signals to drivers so that they recognize the danger and drive slower. Here’s roughly the approach I would take:

1. Identify where there is excessive speeding now.

Work with law enforcement and crash data to identify the streets where there is excessive speeding, recurring crashes, or a perceived sense of danger due to speed.

2. Have a Street Design Team observe these sites.

Have a Street Design Team observe these sites and document the extent of speeding, the multiple causes, and any potential points of conflict. Have the team develop a hypothesis as to what design changes would reduce traffic speeds to safe levels. (We had a course on Establishing a Street Design Team in the 2021 Local-Motive tour.)

3. Use a Tactical Urbanism approach to create a temporary redesign.

In the same Local-Motive tour stop where we discussed establishing a street design team, we heard from Anthony Garcia and Mike Lydon, authors of the book Tactical Urbanism, about how temporary projects can be used to test out design ideas more effectively, more affordably, and with clearer results than traditional design processes. Use this approach to redesign the street.

4. Measure the results. Iterate to the desired result.

The goal is to reduce speeds to something safe for the neighborhood. Keep iterating the design until the desired results are achieved. Use this process to build local knowledge and capacity that can be applied to similar situations within the community.

5. Make the temporary changes permanent.

Now that you know what works at the site, develop a plan to make the changes permanent.

Now you are ready to install traffic cameras because the vast majority of drivers are going to be operating at speeds that are safe, which is now the default. Speed cameras will catch those people who are deviating from that baseline of safety, which is where you want that enforcement effort focused.

Individuals who are repeated aggressive drivers should be part of some type of personal intervention to help them improve their driving habits, or ultimately should have their license suspended or revoked. If you’ve done the work up to this point, that group is going to be really small and easily identifiable.

In summary, we won’t make a dangerous street suddenly safe through increased enforcement, automated or otherwise. For true change, we need to make the design of the street itself safer. I also believe this will reduce the number of interactions with law enforcement and will give communities the best opportunity for law enforcement to focus on situations where their presence is needed and helpful.

Cover photo by Eliobed Suarez on Unsplash

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