Assembly Bill 645 would bring back speed cameras to California. What could possibly go wrong?

Speed cameras could be coming to six California cities — including Los Angeles, Glendale and Long Beach — if a bill just passed by the Assembly becomes law.

Speed cameras are currently illegal in California, but Assembly Bill 645 would authorize a pilot program of privately operated camera systems that detect violations of the speed limit, take a photograph of the license plate and transmit the data so a citation can be mailed to the registered owner of the vehicle.

What could possibly go wrong?

The text of the law is packed with things that could go wrong, presented as a long list of measures intended to prevent or mitigate the obvious problems.

To answer the concern that the camera systems will harass drivers for minor violations, the bill specifies that the systems can’t generate tickets for speeding if it’s less than 11 mph over the speed limit.

To head off criticism that minority and low-income drivers will be disproportionately impacted, the bill requires cities to prepare a report that includes “a racial and economic equity impact analysis, developed in collaboration with local racial justice and economic equity stakeholder groups.”

To address the objection that low-income people can’t afford to pay speeding tickets, especially with all the added fees that are attached to them, the bill requires cities to have a “diversion program for indigent speed safety system violation recipients.”

To respond to privacy concerns, no facial recognition technology is allowed, the cameras will only be allowed to photograph the rear of the vehicle and cities must have a “policy” for protecting data from unauthorized access. (That always works.)

What about the problem of cities being motivated to use the cameras as a streetside revenue generator? That’s always a risk. In the 2010 recession, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed using speed cameras as a way to raise $397 million. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, trying to close a $1.2 billion budget deficit in 2021, lowered the speeding ticket trigger from 10 mph over the limit to 6 mph.

But don’t worry about that: AB 645 tightly restricts the use of the revenue from speed cameras.

Worry about this: It directs the money into a program of converting the streets into a virtual miniature golf course of obstructions and traps.

According to the bill, the revenue from the speed cameras “shall first be used to recover program costs. Program costs include, but are not limited to, the construction of traffic-calming measures …”

AB 645 defines “traffic-calming measures” to include bicycle lanes, chicanes, chokers, curb extensions, median islands, road diets, roundabouts, speed humps and traffic circles.

So this speed camera bill is actually an attempt to fund an incremental plan to make driving more and more difficult, less and less practical.

Streets Are For Everybody, a group that is co-sponsoring the bill, stated that a person struck by a vehicle going 20 mph has a 5% chance of dying, while someone hit by a car going 40 mph has an 80% chance of dying.

It’s our goal to have no one struck at all, and 20 mph is obviously not the answer. It’s a way of saying, “streets are for everybody except people who are driving to get somewhere.”

Road diets and other tricks to strangle vehicle transportation are not really about pedestrian safety. They’re just the latest expression of a weirdly bitter hatred of cars, a mode of transportation that gives people freedom and options.

As an example, last year California legalized jaywalking with Assembly Bill 2147. The Assembly’s analysis of the bill actually blamed President Herbert Hoover for convening meetings across the country to enact laws governing pedestrians on the streets. “These meetings were heavily influenced by auto industry groups seeking to take the streets from pedestrians and give them to cars,” the bill analysis groused.

And then there’s this: in 2009, Los Angeles and other cities began installing new LED streetlights. L.A.’s Bureau of Street Lighting hailed the energy-efficient change as “a leap forward in lighting technology.”

Between 2008 and 2018, pedestrian fatalities in the U.S. increased 53%.

Forget the road diets and speed cameras. Think of how many lives could be saved if we weren’t so dim.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley