Traffic Safety Experts Say City’s Dummy Red-Light Camera Plan is Smart Stuff

Transportation Alternatives (T.A.), a traffic safety watchdog group, strongly supports the New York City Department of Transportation’s plan to install 200 decoy red-light cameras around the city. Currently, the city has 50 red light cameras and no dummy cameras in place.

The use of decoy cameras to multiply the effectiveness of real red-light cameras is standard practice in cities with photo-enforcement programs. Toronto’s red-light program deploys three dummy cameras for every ticket issuing camera. Ten real cameras are rotated among 40 intersections, so drivers never know which are the real cameras and which ones are not. In London, signs prominently mark the areas where traffic is monitored by photo-radar.

The City has been using red-light cameras for automated enforcement since 1994. Efforts to expand the red-light camera program from it’s current 50 to 100 was thwarted earlier this summer by state lawmakers. Studies of New York City’s red-light camera program showed a dramatic decrease in crashes as a result of the cameras usage—as much as 70% at some locations.

Ellen Cavanagh, campaign director for Transportation Alternatives, stated:

Even more valuable than the individual tickets is the threat of being ticketed that the dummy cameras represent. For every person who receives a ticket for a red-light violation, there are others who didn’t take that risk that light knowing they might get caught. We hope that when the city does get additional red light cameras it also installs a proportional number of dummy cameras along with them. It’s an excellent way to broaden the scope of one of the DOT’s most effective traffic safety programs.