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Anonymous wrote:The contractor leasing the equipment is making $6.3 million over two years.

https://legiscan.com/DC/text/PR25-0202/id/2808247

DC has a whole traffic camera industrial complex. It's like a cottage industry.

The number of tickets being issued is ridiculous considering how small DC is. But the contractors (and their shareholders) make money. The politicians collect revenue, not to mention campaign contributions from the contractors. DDOT has a reason for its huge budget. The War on Bikes loonies enjoy average drivers being carpet bombed with tickets that, probably in the vast majority of cases, no human cop would ever issue.

It’s voluntary.

They act like people are getting nabbed for 1 over. You have an 11mph buffer. That's almost a 50% increase over 25mph roads, and more than a 50% over 20mph roads.

Almost half the tickets aren't for speeding. Also, did you see how many tickets are being issued? 3.3 million? That doesn't seem kind of insane given there aren't even that all that many people who drive here.

1.6 million 11mph+ speeding tickets are insane, but I imagine we think that for different reasons.

We probably agree that we can't ticket drivers into obeying the law. i suspect we disagree on how to go forward as well.

I mean, use your brain. If there were actually that many dangerous drivers, there would be an epidemic of crashes. Clearly that's not happening. Probably a lot of those tickets are a result of the city adopting absurdly low speed in limits in a lot of places. Obviously many people are not going to obey those. Those tickets are also issued regardless of the circumstances. You can be driving on a street at 6am on a Sunday morning, with literally no one else on the streets or sidewalks, and if you go 31 mph in some places, you get a ticket. That's just dumb. A lot of these tickets are also going to out of town visitors who are just driving like normal people.

I'm sorry that you are so offended that the DC government sets speed limits to safeguard the welfare of DC residents. You are within your rights to feel that way, but most of the rest of us find it completely pathetic.

I've been pulled over a couple of times in Maryland in circumstances that I thought were ridiculous. I went to court and contested it. You have the same right to contest any tickets issued to you by the DC government.

But to pretend that DC's speed limits are some giant conspiracy - or are not informed by evidence - is very childish.

Where's the evidence that burying the city in traffic tickets has improved safety? In the past two years, DDOT has issued more than 5 million tickets. What has the city gotten in return? The rate of speeding related deaths in this city is unchanged.

It was posted earlier. You are just to lazy to read it.

See the section "Do ATE cameras make streets safer?" in this article: https://ggwash.org/view/97212/smile-youre-on-camera-a-deep-dive-on-automated-traffic-enforcement-data.

The following studies are referenced:

[url]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25247551/#:~:text=Speed%20cameras%20were%20found%20to,to%20the%20mean%20(RTM)
[/url]

https://www.cdc.gov/transportation-safety/calculator/speed.html?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/calculator/factsheet/speed.html

https://ggwash.org/images/posts/_resized/peteATE_reduction_in_speeding_bar_graph.png

There is a lot of evidence. But because it contradicts your argument, I doubt you will find much use for it.

Do you have any actual studies of what happened when DC increased annual ticketing by 800 percent? Or just kooky blog posts?

Do you even bother clicking on the links that people give you? They provide direct evidence that speed cameras reduce speeding, crashes, accidents, and deaths. But you are not interested in evidence, are you? You are only interested in indulging in your crazed obsession with DC traffic cameras.

The topline DC specific data is very clear. None of the "safety" measures implemented have had any impact on safety.

If they did, you'd see movement in the number of speeding related deaths, but you don't. Not even a little bit. An 820 percent increase in ticketing has accomplished nothing in terms of reducing deaths.

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Anonymous wrote:The contractor leasing the equipment is making $6.3 million over two years.

https://legiscan.com/DC/text/PR25-0202/id/2808247

DC has a whole traffic camera industrial complex. It's like a cottage industry.

The number of tickets being issued is ridiculous considering how small DC is. But the contractors (and their shareholders) make money. The politicians collect revenue, not to mention campaign contributions from the contractors. DDOT has a reason for its huge budget. The War on Bikes loonies enjoy average drivers being carpet bombed with tickets that, probably in the vast majority of cases, no human cop would ever issue.

It’s voluntary.

They act like people are getting nabbed for 1 over. You have an 11mph buffer. That's almost a 50% increase over 25mph roads, and more than a 50% over 20mph roads.

Almost half the tickets aren't for speeding. Also, did you see how many tickets are being issued? 3.3 million? That doesn't seem kind of insane given there aren't even that all that many people who drive here.

1.6 million 11mph+ speeding tickets are insane, but I imagine we think that for different reasons.

We probably agree that we can't ticket drivers into obeying the law. i suspect we disagree on how to go forward as well.

I mean, use your brain. If there were actually that many dangerous drivers, there would be an epidemic of crashes. Clearly that's not happening. Probably a lot of those tickets are a result of the city adopting absurdly low speed in limits in a lot of places. Obviously many people are not going to obey those. Those tickets are also issued regardless of the circumstances. You can be driving on a street at 6am on a Sunday morning, with literally no one else on the streets or sidewalks, and if you go 31 mph in some places, you get a ticket. That's just dumb. A lot of these tickets are also going to out of town visitors who are just driving like normal people.

I'm sorry that you are so offended that the DC government sets speed limits to safeguard the welfare of DC residents. You are within your rights to feel that way, but most of the rest of us find it completely pathetic.

I've been pulled over a couple of times in Maryland in circumstances that I thought were ridiculous. I went to court and contested it. You have the same right to contest any tickets issued to you by the DC government.

But to pretend that DC's speed limits are some giant conspiracy - or are not informed by evidence - is very childish.

Where's the evidence that burying the city in traffic tickets has improved safety? In the past two years, DDOT has issued more than 5 million tickets. What has the city gotten in return? The rate of speeding related deaths in this city is unchanged.

It was posted earlier. You are just to lazy to read it.

See the section "Do ATE cameras make streets safer?" in this article: https://ggwash.org/view/97212/smile-youre-on-camera-a-deep-dive-on-automated-traffic-enforcement-data.

The following studies are referenced:

[url]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25247551/#:~:text=Speed%20cameras%20were%20found%20to,to%20the%20mean%20(RTM)
[/url]

https://www.cdc.gov/transportation-safety/calculator/speed.html?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/calculator/factsheet/speed.html

https://ggwash.org/images/posts/_resized/peteATE_reduction_in_speeding_bar_graph.png

There is a lot of evidence. But because it contradicts your argument, I doubt you will find much use for it.

Do you have any actual studies of what happened when DC increased annual ticketing by 800 percent? Or just kooky blog posts?

Do you even bother clicking on the links that people give you? They provide direct evidence that speed cameras reduce speeding, crashes, accidents, and deaths. But you are not interested in evidence, are you? You are only interested in indulging in your crazed obsession with DC traffic cameras.

The topline DC specific data is very clear. None of the "safety" measures implemented have had any impact on safety.

AAA has complained about DC's ticketing policies.

“I don’t know another local jurisdiction in the entire nation that has generated as much money from traffic tickets, parking tickets, and moving violations,” said John Townsend, a public relations manager for AAA Mid-Atlantic. “That tells us that things are out of control and out of hand in the District of Columbia.”

D.C. has the 20th largest population in the United States but managed to surpass all other cities in traffic citation revenue. Townsend said the disparity in revenue between D.C. and other cities stems from the much larger fees assessed to drivers in the city. He argued that the high fees, which were passed under the guise of safety, don’t actually make residents safer.

“We’ve looked high and low. We looked across the globe, and we have not found one major study that proves there is a link between the amount of the fine and compliance,” Townsend said.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The contractor leasing the equipment is making $6.3 million over two years.

https://legiscan.com/DC/text/PR25-0202/id/2808247

DC has a whole traffic camera industrial complex. It's like a cottage industry.

The number of tickets being issued is ridiculous considering how small DC is. But the contractors (and their shareholders) make money. The politicians collect revenue, not to mention campaign contributions from the contractors. DDOT has a reason for its huge budget. The War on Bikes loonies enjoy average drivers being carpet bombed with tickets that, probably in the vast majority of cases, no human cop would ever issue.

It’s voluntary.

They act like people are getting nabbed for 1 over. You have an 11mph buffer. That's almost a 50% increase over 25mph roads, and more than a 50% over 20mph roads.

Almost half the tickets aren't for speeding. Also, did you see how many tickets are being issued? 3.3 million? That doesn't seem kind of insane given there aren't even that all that many people who drive here.

1.6 million 11mph+ speeding tickets are insane, but I imagine we think that for different reasons.

We probably agree that we can't ticket drivers into obeying the law. i suspect we disagree on how to go forward as well.

I mean, use your brain. If there were actually that many dangerous drivers, there would be an epidemic of crashes. Clearly that's not happening. Probably a lot of those tickets are a result of the city adopting absurdly low speed in limits in a lot of places. Obviously many people are not going to obey those. Those tickets are also issued regardless of the circumstances. You can be driving on a street at 6am on a Sunday morning, with literally no one else on the streets or sidewalks, and if you go 31 mph in some places, you get a ticket. That's just dumb. A lot of these tickets are also going to out of town visitors who are just driving like normal people.

I'm sorry that you are so offended that the DC government sets speed limits to safeguard the welfare of DC residents. You are within your rights to feel that way, but most of the rest of us find it completely pathetic.

I've been pulled over a couple of times in Maryland in circumstances that I thought were ridiculous. I went to court and contested it. You have the same right to contest any tickets issued to you by the DC government.

But to pretend that DC's speed limits are some giant conspiracy - or are not informed by evidence - is very childish.

Where's the evidence that burying the city in traffic tickets has improved safety? In the past two years, DDOT has issued more than 5 million tickets. What has the city gotten in return? The rate of speeding related deaths in this city is unchanged.

It was posted earlier. You are just to lazy to read it.

See the section "Do ATE cameras make streets safer?" in this article: https://ggwash.org/view/97212/smile-youre-on-camera-a-deep-dive-on-automated-traffic-enforcement-data.

The following studies are referenced:

[url]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25247551/#:~:text=Speed%20cameras%20were%20found%20to,to%20the%20mean%20(RTM)
[/url]

https://www.cdc.gov/transportation-safety/calculator/speed.html?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/calculator/factsheet/speed.html

https://ggwash.org/images/posts/_resized/peteATE_reduction_in_speeding_bar_graph.png

There is a lot of evidence. But because it contradicts your argument, I doubt you will find much use for it.

Do you have any actual studies of what happened when DC increased annual ticketing by 800 percent? Or just kooky blog posts?

Do you even bother clicking on the links that people give you? They provide direct evidence that speed cameras reduce speeding, crashes, accidents, and deaths. But you are not interested in evidence, are you? You are only interested in indulging in your crazed obsession with DC traffic cameras.

The topline DC specific data is very clear. None of the "safety" measures implemented have had any impact on safety.

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Anonymous wrote:Did you know there's almost no stop sign cameras west of the park? I wonder how that happens....

Wealthiest neighborhoods in DC have little to no traffic cameras. For instance, you will never catch a traffic camera on Chain Bridge Road.

Drivers in black neighborhoods are 17 times more likely to be ticketed in DC than drivers in white neighborhoods.

OK. How many times are drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists in black neighborhoods more likely to be killed or injured by traffic violence than drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists in white neighborhoods?

You don’t know, do you?

If only you cared as much about those whose lives are shattered by reckless drivers as much as those reckless drivers who get ticketed.

It's extremely rate for anyone of any color in Washington D.C. to be killed by a speeding driver.

I knew someone who was killed in DC - on a crosswalk - by a speeding driver who had amassed thousands of dollars in unpaid fines. You can her death “rate” (sic) and advocate against policies that make our streets safer. I will call her death her preventable and advocate for policies that will prevent DC residents from being frightened, injured, maimed, and killed by reckless drivers.

The driver in this scenario is an extreme outlier. Most people in this city are perfectly safe drivers. The question is why DDOT is burying the city in 3 million tickets when the problem is a tiny number of reckless drivers. It's the traffic equivalent of stationing National Guard troops on every corner in the city because some guy somewhere stabbed someone.

Are you really so dense that you believe those 3 million tickets are uniformly distributed across the population? No, a relatively small number of extremely careless drivers get the tickets. They are outliers and that’s the point. Were their dangerous behavior being appropriately sanctioned victims like Patricia Bullinger would still be alive.

Aside from there being zero evidence that's the case, it's clear you don't drive and also that your math skills are nonexistent. I dont know what you mean by a "tiny" number of drivers but do the math. Do you think those 3.3 million tickets went to, like, 100 people? They'd have to get 90 tickets a day, every single day of the year, for the math to work. Oh you meant 500 people? Doesn't really seem "tiny" but the math is still silly. They'd have to get 18 tickets every single day. 1000 people? 1000 extremely careless drivers seems like a major problem, but I'm pretty sure there's not a single person who gets 9 tickets every single day.

The DC lab study identified 100,000 high risk drivers.

Seems a little ridiculous, no? How do so many supposedly high risk drivers produce so few traffic fatalities? Also, exactly how many drivers do you think there are in DC?

There are a lot of non-fatal accidents, roughly 40 per day that merit a police report. Plus evasive maneuvers by everyone else on foot/biking/driving. Some roads like 295 get too congested to get fatal accidents very often, even with bad driving. Additionally some people just flat out avoid certain roads at certain times a day.

Not to mention that all of us who own vehicles pay for these accidents through elevated insurance premiums. People complain about equity and cameras, but the reality is that the truly awful behavior of some drivers in DC - and the failure of the DC government to take those drivers off the road - pushes the cost of owning a legally-insured car out of the reach of many poor families.

Give me a break. The rates DC charges for tickets is nothing short of predatory. You can owe $1200 for a single traffic ticket.

You're making stuff up again. Here's the fine schedule:

18-2200.1 SPEED 11-15 OVR LIMT $100
18-2200.1 SPEED 16-20 OVR LIMT $150
18-2200.1 SPEED 21-25 OVR LIMT $200
18-2200 OVER 25 MPH CONTROLLED $400
18-2200 OVER 25 MPH NON-CONTROLLED $500

The fines can be cut in half if you qualify for SNAP benefits (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAdIRBjCS2I).

So in DC, you can do 100mph in a 25mph zone and the fine can be as little as $200. That's absurd. Try speeding in a rural county in the south and see what happens. It's going to cost you a hell of a lot more than $200, I can guarantee you.

Heck, even Virginia routinely sends drivers to jail - including one Nats outfielder and an automotive journalist - for doing over 80mph on open roads.

If you really think DC fines are "predatory", about the best thing I can say about you is that you lack context.

The fees double after 30 days, and there's a 20 percent surcharge on top of that. You can read more here:

Predatory Penalties: How Late Fees on DC Traffic Tickets Punish the Poor

https://www.dcfpi.org/all/predatory-penalties-late-fees-dc-traffic-tickets-punish-poor/

So pay your ticket. You have control over late fees.

Or don't speed in the first place. Drivers have control over that as well.

Take responsibility for your behavior! Sheesh!

Let me remind everyone how traffic laws work in DC:

12 year old driving an ATV down the middle of Connecticut Avenue during rush hour: no penalty

Moped driver blowing stop sign at 40 mph: no penalty

Motorcyclist blowing stop sign at 40 mph: no penalty

Cyclist with infant placed in basket in front of bike: no penalty

Cyclist with two small children on back with no helmets: no penalty

Man on e-bike going 35mph with child in lap with no helmet: no penalty

Car driver going 50 mph in a 25 mph zone with no traffic cameras: no penalty

Car driver doesnt stop at stop sign for full three seconds at empty intersection with camera: $100, doubled after 30 days

Please tell us what consequences arise if that $100 fine is not paid?

Almost of the other behaviors you mention violate DC traffic or child endangerment laws and fall well within the remit of MPD's enforcement authority. Not many people here will disagree with the argument that there should be more of that enforcement activity.

There's lots of consequences, which is why the statistics show most people pay their tickets. But it's hard not to feel like a sucker for paying when the city doesn't enforce any laws on any other mode of transportation. I see cyclists and people on e-bikes putting young children in imminent danger on a regular basis. Has a cyclist ever been issued a ticket in this city for anything at all? Has there been even one instance?

You claim that there are “lots of consequences” for not paying tickets and yet you can’t name one.

Are you really this stupid?

-Tickets double after a month
-A 20 percent surcharge applies after that
-The city sicks a collections agent after you who will call and text you every single day
-Your license can be suspended
-Your license can be revoked
-Your car can be booted or towed
-It will hurt your credit score
-You can't renew your driver's license
-You can't register a car
-The government will take the money out of your tax refund
-The government will sue you

This is peak DCUM. Some buffoon calls another poster “stupid” and then proceeds to get a whole slew of objective facts completely wrong. This is nothing quite as invigorating as encountering such self-righteous sh*theads in the wild. Never change, DCUM, never change.

It's obvious you don't drive. Go get yourself a ticket, don't pay it and see what happens. You can check off this list as each one happens. The idea that DC does nothing about unpaid tickets is plainly untrue, and you can go see for yourself, firsthand.

Are you speaking from experience or just making things up to make yourself feel better?

You don't have to take anyone's word for it. Just go get yourself a ticket and see what happens. This notion that DC doesn't pursue people is a weird and easily disproven urban myth.

"Easily disproven" you say, yet you can't come up with a single real world instance of someone who had their license suspended, revoked or non-renewed; who couldn't register their car; whose credit score was tarnished; or whose tax refund was garnished due to outstanding ticket fines.

Note that, since 2022, DC has allowed those with outstanding fines to renew their licenses (https://dcist.com/story/22/07/11/dc-end-debt-drivers-license-denial/). A driver who killed a pedestrian in DC a couple of years ago had thousands in unpaid camera tickets, yet had a valid registration and driver license.

Booting or towing of vehicles with outstanding fines does happen, once in a blue moon. DC has just seven boot crews and probably fewer tow crews. Only unoccupied vehicles with tickets more than 60-days old are eligible can be booted or towed. Some unlucky folk may get towed, but the probability is low.

Unpaid fines will go to a collections agency after a while and you may get calls and texts from them. I am not aware of any consequences resulting from those who ignored those calls or texts.