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Senator Gounardes: "Red light cameras save lives—especially those in cars"
![Image of a stoplight with a red light camera attached.](/sites/default/files/styles/760x377/public/2024/02/06/captura-de-pantalla-2024-02-06-a-las-1.00.44-a.-m.png?itok=S9RtCdAV)
Some skeptics complain that New York City’s speed and red light camera programs are part of a sinister plot to milk motorists for all they’re worth. But what critics misunderstand is that these life-saving programs offer the greatest safety benefit to drivers themselves.
The logic behind the cameras is simple: most drivers don’t run red lights. And those drivers, along with everyone else, are safer when the ones who do get caught.
In 2021, 45% of all traffic fatalities in the city happened at intersections. And the problem is getting worse: in the first nine months of 2023, red-light tickets increased 35% from the same period in 2019.
Naysayers argue the cameras “target drivers.” But it’s people in cars who benefit the most from the program. Consider this: pedestrian injury crashes at intersections with red light cameras fell to 130 in 2020, compared to an average of 208 in the three years before cameras were installed, a 37.5% drop. But crashes that injured motorists at those same intersections dropped to 799 from an astoundingly high average of 1,481, a drop of 46%.
In other words, motorists saw the greatest safety benefit of anyone on the road.