Single District speed camera: 116,734 tickets worth $11.6 million

If you lined them all up head to toe, they would stretch from the White House to south of Richmond.

They could fill every seat in FedEx Field and Verizon Center and still leave people out in the cold.

Graphic

Where the most traffic citations have been issued

Resources for your commute

Metro maps the Silver Line

Metro is updating its current map to incorporate the Silver Line. Which map do you like best?

Follow Dr. Gridlock on Twitter

Get the latest news that will affect your commute.

Read more from Dr. Gridlock

The blog is your transportation guide to the Beltway and beyond.

More transportation news

That’s how many people got a traffic ticket from a single speed camera on New York Avenue in 23 months.

Tickets issued: 116,734.

Fines levied: $11.6 million.

City sympathy for angry drivers: zero.

“We believe we have made an impact,” said Gwendolyn Crump, spokeswoman for the D.C. police. “There have been 16 fatalities in 2012, compared to 28 at this time last year, for a 43 percent reduction of traffic fatalities. There is great value in slowing drivers down not only for their own safety, but also for safety of all other traveling parties.”

Cameras that spew out tickets to errant drivers have been a game changer in the District and 13 states, which use them to nab speeders. In the District and 24 states, cameras are also used to snare red-light runners. They generate far more revenue than even a legion of police officers sitting beside the road could hope for, raising anger among some people who say they are more about money than safety.

“Some say this may be a backdoor commuter tax,” said John B. Townsend II of AAA, alluding to the fact that suburbanites do not pay wage taxes in the District.

“We at AAA don’t subscribe to that theory, but it’s a sneaking suspicion among motorists, and it’s growing,” said Townsend, who used a Freedom of Information Act request to get data from the District on just how many tickets — and how much money — its top 10 speed cameras produced.

Speeding in America is personified by the reckless young kid in a fast car, but its true face is that of the soccer mom, plumber on a house call or white-collar driver late to work, to whom a 10 or 15 or even 20 mph bump above the posted limit seems almost a God-given right.

It’s common wisdom that police don’t write tickets unless the radar gun shows 10 miles above the limit. Some drivers get angry if cameras cut less slack, and they don’t think their just-over-the-limit speeding is very dangerous.

That’s balderdash, the safety advocates say.

“Most of the fatalities from speed crashes come on secondary and tertiary roads,” said David Kelly, a former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who now leads the National Coalition for Safer Roads. “You’re talking about guys who are doing 50 in a 30 mph zone. There’s actually a science that goes behind speed limits, and the formulas have been tried and tested for decades.”

After declining for several years, the number of road fatalities in the United States may bump up slightly this year, if preliminary data prove correct. In 2010, the latest year from which the count has been finalized, 10,530 people were killed in speed-related crashes. That’s almost one-third of all deaths.

“Red-light and speed cameras have been proven repeatedly to save lives and reduce injuries,” said Jonathan Adkins, deputy executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. “They should be used in areas where there have been crashes and injuries and not based on revenue potential. Anyone who has traveled in the District knows that red-light running and speeding are dangerous threats to all road users. Cameras are an important part of the solution.”