If the goal is to use speed safety cameras (along with other measures) to effectively and fairly deter dangerous speeds, then serious thought should be put into how the program is designed, operated and evaluated. We’re encouraged to see more communities focused on this goal, which helped lead to the development of the new report, Fair Warnings: Recommendations to Promote Equity in Speed Safety Camera Programs.
In our March 2025 webinar, you can learn key takeaways and best practices to administer, monitor and evaluate fair and effective speed safety camera programs. Check out the slides and recording from the one-hour discussion and read our summary below. This was the third in our series highlighting ways to run speed safety cameras in ways that don’t disproportionately burden low income road users. Read more about the range of strategies to promote equity in speed camera programs in our January installment and how to address financial inequities in our February installment.
Panelists Erin LaFarge, Director of Safety Policy at the NYC Department of Transportation (NYCDOT), and Ken Barone, Associate Director at the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project and Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy at University of Connecticut, shared valuable insights from their experiences designing speed safety camera programs. This includes how to establish clear rules for vendors to avoid perverse financial incentives, use data for a strong evaluation process and leverage cameras to bring about needed infrastructure investments. Both programs also serve as models for how to set clear goals and guardrails to focus on deterring high speeds – not raising revenue.
NYC’s Comprehensive Approach to Speed Management
New York City’s program illustrates the power of a well-structured speed safety camera program that is part of a broader speed management strategy to advance Vision Zero. Speed cameras are just one tool the City uses, along with adding safety-centered infrastructure changes, such as traffic calming, lowering speed limits and other tools to manage speeds and prevent traffic fatalities and injuries.
Launched in 2014 in 20 school zones, the City’s program has since expanded to 750 zones with more than 2,400 cameras deployed – the largest of its kind in the nation. And the results are impressive:
Speeding has decreased by 94% and traffic injuries and fatalities decreased 14% at speed safety camera locations in NYC.
Equity protections and robust evaluation are central to NYC’s program. The NYCDOT places cameras in locations where speed data and crash history show they will have the greatest safety impacts. The more than 2,200 cameras are dispersed across every neighborhood in every borough. In fact, the City’s recently released 2024 Automated Speed Enforcement Program report shows that the cameras are equally distributed across the city with no correlation between the racial demographics of a neighborhood and the number of speed cameras present. Analysis across community income levels showed a similarly even distribution of cameras. An equitable distribution not only prevents some communities from being disproportionately impacted by fines but also allows this technology to benefit the communities that need it most. Read more about the importance of balancing camera distribution in our report, Fair Warnings.
Each blue dot on the chart represents a neighborhood. The dots are placed on the chart by the percentage of people of color living in that neighborhood (as shown on the horizontal axis). The red trend line is flat, indicating no correlation between race and the concentration of speed cameras in an area. Source: NYC DOT
NYC has established safeguards around revenue generation to prevent the City from relying on these funds to make other needed safety investments, which could enable a vicious cycle of some safety investments depending on more ticket revenue, spurring an over-reliance on camera fines. Becoming dependent on camera (or any traffic enforcement) revenue can lead to a harmful cycle that disproportionately impacts low-income people and people of color and has posed a serious problem in the past. Recognizing this, cities are working to avoid this with speed safety camera programs.
An example of a safeguard in NYC is that camera vendors are paid a fixed fee per camera rather than based on the number of citations issued, which could also create a motivation for more tickets, prioritizing revenue over safety goals. Vendor compensation should be based on costs, equipment and services on a flat-fee basis, regardless of the number of citations.
And while camera revenue is directed into the City’s general fund, NYCDOT’s LaFarge noted that this structure helps prevent a conflict of interest in which vital street safety improvements become overly dependent on ticket revenue. According to its analysis, the City has invested more than six times the revenue generated by speed cameras into roadway safety improvements.
“Our goal is to get zero violations,” said LaFarge. Since the start of their Vision Zero program in 2013, the City has installed 1,166 street improvements, explicitly prioritizing these safety improvements in communities that need them most. NYC’s Automated Speed Enforcement Program report shows that 36% of street improvement project miles were implemented in high and very high poverty neighborhoods, while these areas make up only 25% of the city's total road mileage.
Analysis showing that high poverty and very high poverty neighborhoods in NYC received a greater proportion of street improvement projects relative to the amount of miles in these areas. Source: NYC DOT
A State-Level Framework for Speed Safety Cameras: Connecticut’s New Program
Connecticut approved the use of speed safety cameras in 2023, in response to rising traffic fatalities and declining enforcement staffing and capacity. The program recently began its rollout in January 2025. Panelist Ken Barone, of the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project, shared how the new program was developed with an emphasis on equity considerations, including requirements around camera placement, analysis and reporting.
The State legislation requires municipalities using speed safety cameras to prepare a written justification explaining how and why a camera was selected for installation at each site, including information on the history and severity of crashes, average daily traffic at the location, history of traffic stops, the community’s poverty rate and more. The University of Connecticut developed a tool to map crash data at signalized intersections, helping communities identify where speeding is a significant contributing factor and prioritize locations for attention.
As explained further in Fair Warnings, how cameras are distributed can have important equity implications, as many of the most dangerously built roadways overlap with low income or communities of color due to a history of underinvestment in safe transportation infrastructure. Simply put, these communities bear the brunt of more high-traffic, high-speed roads, leading to more dangerous conditions that are best addressed by investing in safer street designs. (Read more about this history of underinvestment in our Prioritizing Health Equity resource.)
Recognizing this, Connecticut’s program limits the number of cameras that can be placed in and along Qualified Census Tracts (QCT) — areas with higher concentrations of low-income households. It limits placements to no more than two speed cameras in any one QCT and caps the number that can be placed along municipal borders where lower-income neighborhoods sit adjacent to higher-income communities.
In addition, similar to NYC, speed camera vendors in Connecticut cannot be paid per citation, but rather via capped flat fees. And, aligning with another best practice cited in Fair Warnings, any revenue (beyond operating costs) generated by Connecticut’s program is reinvested specifically in transportation safety projects, reinforcing the goal of safety rather than general revenue generation.
Connecticut’s program also requires active public engagement. Before any cameras are operational, municipalities must conduct a 30-day public awareness campaign, followed by a 30-day warning-only period. After that, fines are capped at $50 for a first offense and $75 for subsequent ones, aligning with Fair Warnings recommendations to set fines at reasonable amounts and the lowest possible levels in order to influence behavior change without disproportionately impacting low-income people.
Whether your community has an existing speed safety camera program or is considering one, we hope you’ll draw inspiration from NYC’s and Connecticut’s work and from others in our new report, Fair Warnings: Promoting Equity in Speed Safety Camera Programs.
And a reminder to check out the other installments of our webinar series on fair and effective speed safety camera programs: An Overview of Equity Protections in Speed Camera Programs and Addressing Financial Impacts of Speed Safety Camera Programs.