Can a $40 fine save lives? Experience suggests it will | COMMENTARY

Drivers, start your checkbooks. Or possibly your credit cards.

Efforts to return the Jones Falls Expressway — aka the Baltimore City Raceway — into something resembling the reliable and safe commuter highway it was intended to be get revved up tomorrow as those long-awaited speed enforcement cameras get their long-awaited teeth. Instead of merely observing speeders on the 8-mile city stretch of Interstate 83, owners of vehicles caught traveling 12 miles per hour or more above the posted limit will get a $40 ticket in the mail.

Expect a traffic jam’s worth of complaints and cries (especially from lead-footed suburbanites) of how unfair this is, how it is a backdoor way to finance city government, how it discourages people from living or working in Baltimore. None of that is true, of course. With the possible exception of poorly operated speed cameras (and more about that in a moment), all of this accrues to the benefit of motorists, from a safer highway to how the ticket proceeds must — by state law — be spent exclusively on I-83 improvements.

Instead of dreading this day, everyone should be happy that it finally arrived. Just ask any commuter: It’s been pretty clear in Baltimore and elsewhere that the COVID-19 pandemic gave certain drivers the idea that every day was the last weekend in May and every road is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Aggressive driving has been in full flower, even as the pandemic has waned and traffic has gotten heavier. Just look at the results from the JFX speed cameras. In just 30 days, the cameras caught nearly 84,000 vehicles in violation, according to the Baltimore Department of Transportation.

That adds up to $3.3 million worth of speeding. Line up the offenders end-to-end, that’s more than 23 miles worth of vehicles. It’s also 2,800 violations per day or 116 per hour or nearly two every minute. Every minute! For 30 days! We would laugh about this behavior, but it’s not actually all that funny. In 2020, the most recent year for which statistics were available across the U.S., speed was a factor in 29% of vehicle crashes, the National Safety Council reports. Those speed-involved crashes took the lives of 10,136 people nationwide. And that was in a year when COVID had significantly reduced traffic. Last year, nearly 43,000 people lost their lives in vehicle crashes — a more than 10% jump from 2020. It is roughly twice the total number of U.S. firearm homicides each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.

Not all lives can be saved with mere traffic tickets, of course. People aren’t always taught a lesson so easily, but it can surely spare some of us from causing a fatal crash. Studies have shown that restricting speeding (along with other improvements like cracking down on drunk driving and upgrading trauma centers) has the potential to save thousands of lives each year. So while it’s difficult to put an exact number on it, yes, those speed cameras on the Jones Falls will likely keep travelers safer. Some people pay closer attention to their behavior when they are at risk of getting a $40 fine. That’s just human nature.

Of course, all that benefit requires that those automated speed cameras be operated properly. Eight years ago, city traffic cameras were found to have an error rate above 10% (or 40 times higher than expected) and the program was severely reduced. So far, there’s no sign of a repeat performance on the Jones Falls, but we will need to monitor the situation.

And speaking of human nature, isn’t it curious how people rightfully recognize the risks posed by firearms in irresponsible hands but are not necessarily as quick to acknowledge the danger of aggressive driving? Both cost hundreds of lives in Maryland each year including many innocent people. Ask any experienced police officer. They know the risks well. In 2020, 44 law enforcement deaths were the result of vehicle crashes of some kind while 45 died from getting shot and more than twice as many combined (182) died from COVID-19.

Given all that, the question is not why must Baltimore have speed cameras on I-83, it’s why haven’t more jurisdictions followed this example to keep their highways safer, particularly when police have so many other public safety obligations for which there is no obvious, reliable and affordable technological assistance?

Baltimore Sun editorial writers offer opinions and analysis on news and issues relevant to readers. They operate separately from the newsroom.