Want safer roads? Allow speed cameras in more places and raise the fines | STAFF COMMENTARY

The Pot Spring Community Association’s quest to slow traffic on Pot Spring Road started in the Timonium backyard of Anne Lewis Smith. The nurse practitioner was getting ready for work on June 16, 2021, when she got an urgent call at 6:50 a.m. from a neighbor who wondered why a battered car was parked next to her backyard deck with a weeping young woman sitting next to it. Turns out the woman had minutes earlier been driving south on Pot Spring at a high speed when she’d lost control, veered into the neighbor’s driveway and then spun out not far from the swing set used by Smith’s then-5-year-old daughter. Smith was horrified and soon engaged local residents in a quest to stop speeders on the often-busy suburban thoroughfare.

In the months that followed, there were yard signs calling on drivers to slow down and police patrols. Baltimore County even agreed to create tree-lined center median strips to narrow travel lanes in both directions. Yet one of the most effective strategies for what engineers refer to as “calming” traffic had been denied the community — even though it had been successfully used just two miles away on Greenside Drive, across from Padonia International Elementary School.

What was it? “Automated speed enforcement,” those roadside cameras that snap a photograph when a vehicle is detected traveling 12 miles per hour or more over the posted speed limit, leading to a $40 fine for the vehicle’s owner. Baltimore County public works employees could not install the speed cameras because state law restricts the use of such devices to school zones, and the nearest classroom was a pre-K program at Timonium United Methodist Church that did not qualify.

Recently, legislation was introduced in Annapolis to make it possible to install speed monitoring systems more widely in Baltimore County, however, with at least two conditions. First, a traffic analysis would have to be performed by county police and the public works department to justify the enforcement at any potential site. And second, and perhaps most important, the location would have to be approved by a majority of the Baltimore County Council after a public hearing, so local residents could give input. Such parameters are not unlike what other counties have done to opt out of the state restrictions including Montgomery, Prince George’s and Anne Arundel.

But if sponsors, including Del. Michelle Guyton (a Democrat whose district includes Pot Spring), think it will be an easy victory, they may need to think again. Fellow Baltimore County Dels. Kathy Szeliga and Ryan Nawrocki, both Republicans, have already come out against it. Their beef? That it’s the first step toward “unlimited” use of speed cameras that they see as an “overreach of power” that will raise money for the government without necessarily changing behavior. Opponents successfully fought off similar legislation last year.

At least one criticism voiced by the delegates is undeniably true: Speed cameras generally only change behavior at the site of the camera. But isn’t that really an argument for more cameras? According to the Federal Highway Administration, speed cameras can reduce crashes by 54% overall and reduce speeding during the hours they’re in use by 63%. A study of speed cameras in Montgomery County mirrored the federal speed reduction data and found a 39% reduction in the likelihood of a serious crash occurring.

It’s also true that those $40 fines may be too small to really get the attention of offenders. So maybe we should boost them. That’s one reason why Gov. Wes Moore’s legislation to beef up work zone safety in the wake of the Baltimore Beltway crash that killed six people last year would raise the speed camera fine to $290 in work zones. The National Highway Safety Transportation Administration has found that such “increases in penalties for speeding have been associated with safety benefits and general deterrence of speeding.”

Let’s face it: A lot of us can make an occasional mistake and end up going 37 mph in a 25 mph zone, and none of us likes paying a fine for it. But speeding can result in outcomes far worse than being out $40 or even being stranded in someone’s backyard. Speeding kills. Maryland experiences more than 500 crash fatalities each year, and speed is a factor in as many as a fifth of them. There are also 33,000 injury-involved crashes in the state annually, and speed again plays a major role in many of them.

If Maryland had unlimited police resources or could afford to calm traffic everywhere with medians, bumps, rumble strips and similar constructions, perhaps cameras would not be necessary. But it doesn’t. Given this reality, expanding the use of speed cameras — where justified by data and with appropriate oversight — with bigger fines should be an easy call in Baltimore County and statewide.

Baltimore Sun editorial writers offer opinions and analysis on news and issues relevant to readers. They operate separately from the newsroom.