By Ed Engel / For The Herald
Two-ton metal objects zoom by at 45 miles per hour through dense urban environments, killing more than 40,000 people every year across America.
When viewed across the history of humankind, driving is an uncommon activity that results in foreseeable and highly significant risks of physical harm; the legal definition of an inherently dangerous activity.
We all owe a collective responsibility for keeping safe on our roads and streets. Those who bear the most responsibility are the planners and engineers who are tasked with designing safe roadways, and elected officials who must robustly fund these traffic calming efforts.
But making all of our streets calm and safe will not happen overnight. As an inherently dangerous activity, drivers owe a responsibility to drive carefully, including staying within the speed limit even when the roadway is so wide, straight and open that speeding feels justified.
Operating equipment that can kill someone, even when operated correctly, is a privilege, not a right. Enforcing traffic laws through warnings and fines will continue to be a necessary feature of our transportation system to keep people safe.
Unfortunately, we’re headed in the wrong direction. According to the Washington Traffic Safety Commission Dashboard, traffic fatalities increased from 408 in 2013 to 685 in 2022 (a 60 percent increase). In Snohomish County, traffic fatalities increased from 33 to 58 (a 75 percent increase). The greatest percentage increase in fatalities has been to people walking, with pedestrian fatalities increasing from three to 18 in Snohomish County for the period.
People of color are disproportionately impacted by this traffic violence; Black 17 percent higher, Hispanic 28 percent higher, and Native American 215 percent higher, statewide.
People of color face other disproportionate impacts of our transportation system as well. Police have used minor offenses, such as broken tail lights, as pretextual stops to go on fishing expeditions for other infractions or simply to put fear into people of color.
Too frequently, these traffic stops result in death. Since 2017, more than 800 people have been killed after being pulled over in the U.S., according to the Mapping Police Violence database. In Washington state, Black people are nearly four times more likely to be killed by police than white people.
The complete elimination of traffic fatalities by designing our streets to be inherently safe is the only sure-fire way to eliminate both traffic fatalities and the disproportionate impacts of traffic violence and enforcement.
It’s possible. Hoboken, N.J., has effectively reached zero traffic fatalities, and Fort Myers, Fla., and Evanston, Ill., have had multiple years of zero traffic fatalities.
Our communities need clear roadmaps for making this happen. The City of Lynnwood’s Connect Lynnwood Plan and the City of Everett’s upcoming effort to create a Vision Zero plan are steps in the right direction.
However, until we completely redesign our transportation system to be safe, enforcement will be a necessary strategy to save lives.
Automated enforcement, particularly speed cameras, is effective at reducing speeds and collisions. A broad review of studies on the effectiveness of camera programs found that they reduce collisions involving serious injury by up to 50 percent. In Seattle, speed cameras have reduced speed violations by half within school zones.
Most importantly, cameras eliminate implicit bias and the possible escalation of police interactions.
To ensure automated enforcement is not targeted to neighborhoods where people of color live, the installation of speed cameras should be comprehensive. All streets should be targeted near all schools, parks, and hospitals, regardless of existing speed and crash data.
To ensure communities with traffic cameras benefit from enforcement actions, the revenue should not go to the city’s general fund. Instead, the revenue should be driven back into redesigning the street to be slower and calmer, with the input of the surrounding neighborhood.
To make sure wealthier offenders are appropriately discouraged from poor driving, the fee structure should be progressive. The fee structure could be based on the vehicle weight and value. Low income people enrolled in state programs such as Apple Health and WIC should not have to pay the administrative processing fees that are often tacked on to the traffic fine.
At the state level, the Legislature has already taken several steps to allow for robust implementation of automated speed enforcement and to address issues of privacy and equity. The photographs are stored securely only for short periods of time and cannot be used in criminal investigations. And getting an automated ticket does not affect a driver’s record.
The state should make additional improvements, such as eliminating the requirement that a uniformed police officer review the photograph of each violation. This unnecessarily adds cost and time to what is an administrative rather than criminal violation. The City of Seattle is delaying the rollout of new speed cameras because it lacks enough police officers to conduct the reviews. We need police officers investigating crimes, not looking at photos.
Focusing solely on the potential fiscal burden imposed on offenders understates how devastating speeding is on neighborhoods. If we operate from the position that the effects of speeding disproportionately fall on those who are Black, Hispanic and Native American — as the data overwhelmingly supports — we should implement automated enforcement while simultaneously taking measures to fix our streets.
Ed Engel is mobility justice advocate for Snotrac, the Snohomish County Transportation Coalition.
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