American roads are dangerous. The Department of Transportation reports that in 2021, nearly 43,000 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes. Of those, 7,388 were pedestrians. On Philadelphia's Roosevelt Boulevard, reckless driving and speeding in pedestrian zones have led the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to try a pilot program that allows speed cameras.

On this episode of the podcast, we speak to Erick Guerra, associate professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania, the lead researcher for a study looking into whether automated traffic enforcement has any effect on safety and on our traffic behavior. Based on the Roosevelt Boulevard pilot, the study concluded that the economic benefits of reduced crashes substantially exceed the total fines paid by violators.

Not only has Philadelphia's program increased traffic safety while avoiding the disadvantages of increased police enforcement, revenue from the fines is also routed back into other traffic and pedestian safety projects; in 2021, the fines generated $22 million for such efforts.

Speed cameras, like so many measures that inconvenience drivers, can be controversial in America. So the results of this pilot – and finding that speed cameras are actually making our city streets safer – is crucial to understand.

“When people see things like, traffic fine violations, parking tickets, things like that, it can be frustrating – and particularly the idea that a city … is collecting revenue off of these violations, off of these fines,” Guerra says. “It's important to document that the benefits to society are much larger than those fines, in terms of the effects on collisions, injuries, fatalities.”

Read the original article, by Next City reporting fellow Maylin Tu, here.