As state and local officials in Maryland began deploying enforcement cameras in work zones and near schools last week to deter speeding, results from Montgomery County came in showing just how effective the strategy can be.
In a report to the Montgomery Council on that county's pioneering automated speed enforcement program, the Office of Legislative Oversight found that speeding had been cut in half and collisions had fallen 28 percent over one year in school zones and on residential streets where cameras have been deployed.
Montgomery County took the lead in fighting speeding in Maryland in 2006 when it won passage of a state law allowing it to use speed cameras to supplement the efforts of local police officers. That statute provided a model for the statewide law that passed this spring and became effective last week permitting other jurisdictions and state agencies to use the cameras to generate tickets within tightly prescribed limits.
The law adopted by the General Assembly was diluted to an almost ridiculous degree to limit the program's scope and go easy on speeders. But it's a start.
The results from Montgomery County provide significant evidence that Maryland -- however tentatively - is on the right track.
The county's independent watchdogs found that the cameras have been far more effective in influencing behavior than in grabbing gobs of revenue for government officials to play with - undercutting one of the most loudly voiced complaints from opponents of automated enforcement. The report found that two-thirds of the vehicles caught on camera between May 2007 and June 2009 made only one cameo appearance.
"These data suggest that for most drivers, the $40 fine effectively deters future speeding in speed camera enforcement locations," the study says.
As a result of this new and better behavior, the amount of money generated by the cameras fell off precipitously over the course of a year. The report found that after a year in operation, the cameras generated 78 percent fewer tickets than they did in the same month the year before. Among the other findings:
* Vehicle speeds in speed camera zones declined by 6 percent after a year in operation. The percentage of vehicles traveling over the speed limit fell from 25 percent to 13 percent.
* Where at the start of the program more than 20 out of every 1,000 vehicles in targeted zones were traveling 11 mph or more over the limit - the minimum for issuing a ticket under the Montgomery program - by the end of the year fewer than 10 of each 1,000 were doing so.
