safety first

Speed Cameras Are Making the City Lots of Money

Police Car Speeding on Street.
Photo: Paul Hardy/Corbis

Bad news for lead-footed drivers: That new speed-camera program launched at the beginning of the year seems to be working. Since the January 16 launch of the program, which is intended to cut down on speeding near city schools, the Department of Transportation has handed out 11,715 $50 tickets to people going ten miles per hour or more over the limit, resulting in $585,750 in potential revenue for the city, assuming all those perpetrators actually pay up.

This was all done using just five cameras at undisclosed locations throughout the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island between 7 a.m. and 4:10 p.m., a DOT spokesman said Friday. The New York Post points out that the most speeding violations happened on westbound Queens Boulevard between 58th and 53rd streets in Woodside, as well as at the intersections of Woodhaven Boulevard and 62nd Road and Woodhaven Boulevard and Furmanville Avenue.

And there’s more good news for New Yorkers who prefer to share the road with speed limit-abiding citizens: The state originally authorized the use of a total of 20 cameras, and ten more have already been put in place. The Post notes that while it’s “too early in the program to determine what affect the cameras will have on pedestrian safety in New York, evidence from other cities shows speed cameras can dramatically reduce accidents, deaths and injuries caused by speeding,” which we’re sure the city would appreciate even more than the ticket money.

Speed Cameras Are Making the City Lots of Money