Saved by the Camera: How New York Can Use Its Red-Light and Speed Cameras to Prevent Deadly Crashes

By Nicole Gelinas

  New York City, enabled by state legislation, has long policed its roads with the help of cameras to catch vehicles running red lights and, more recently, breaking the speed limit. Such automated enforcement has helped the city reduce serious crashes by double-digit percentages, leading to a decline in fatal vehicle crashes from a modern high of 701 in 1990 to a modern low of 206 in 2018.1 However, the city has not adequately used the data gleaned from red-light and speed camera tickets to help predict and thus prevent serious crashes. Reckless driving has increased since early 2020: by 2022, traffic deaths had risen to 261,2 27% above the low, thus reversing a decade of progress, before rising slightly in 2023, to 262. This increase in traffic deaths was part of a nationwide trend of reduced policing and spikes in antisocial behavior and violent deaths. The city sharply curtailed police traffic stops beginning in 2020, for example. That year, the city conducted only 510,000 stops—barely half the 985,000 stops recorded in 2019. Through November 2023, traffic stops had returned to just 70% of 2019 levels. As it continues to return police traffic stops to adequate levels, the city, aided by the state, should also use the information that its camera system provides to remove potentially deadly vehicles from the road.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2024. 26p.