Fairfield Speed Camera Debate - Guerrilla or Robin Hood?

Recently Fairfield instituted a speed camera based automatic ticketing system, starting with the roads around certain schools. It was neither sudden nor unexpected. There was lead time of several months of notice of posted speed limits prior to the camera installations. There were also discussions in the town council and related bodies about cost, impact and such. For clarity, these are town roads with about 30mph speed limit reduced to 25mph a certain distance from the school and further to 20mph closer to the school around school start and end times.

The logic for the speed limit is safety especially for school kids. Residents paid little attention to the speed limits. The norm was that one drives around 35-45mph on these roads absent traffic. I argue that the eventual installation was the outcome of the lack of response to ‘being asked nicely’.

Subscribe

Eventually, the cameras were installed. Residents were informed that they would be automatically ticketed for violations over 10mph above posted speed limits. So, that breaks down to 40mph, 35mph and at the slowest 30 mph. Arguably, that in itself is fair grace given any amount over the speed limit is technically illegal. To acclimatize the change, in the month of May, only warnings would be sent out and actual ticketing would begin in June.

What unfolded this month was beyond anybody’s imagination.

"Through May 19, Fairfield had already issued approximately 114,000 warnings across six school-zone camera locations. At the current pace of roughly 6,500 warnings per day, the town could finish May approaching 190,000 total warnings."- Dave Rock, BoF, Fairfield

Notably, this number is a significant multiple of what was anticipated in the budgeting models used by the camera operator (out of town company) in their presentation to the town.

The uproar from the townspeople was incandescent; sections of people claimed a variety of victimization, from government overreach to nefarious profiteering to unnecessary oversight to implausibility of the veracity of the ticketing to the unfairness of it all to fear of becoming a surveillance state, all for a technology based solution (that has been in use in other places) to enforce adherence to the law.

This is such a fascinating social issue - Why do these cameras invoke such strong reactions? Robin Hood or Guerrilla - the town is divided!

As a town resident, with kids in these schools, recipient of warnings and observer of these debates, I can see there is definitely consensus on the Why (the roads need to be safer for everyone), and the What (enforcement of speed limits); The divergence is in the How this is implemented.

Arguably, even if only 80% of those tickets are incontrovertible, it is a sad evidence of something deeply troubling; Fairfield has a serious speeding problem! Yet it should not be a surprise. In 2024, Fairfield ranked third in the state for traffic violations issued*. These cameras are simply capturing that behavior in almost real time and mirroring it back to us, unavoidably.

Data supports the speed limits and why it needs to be around the clock. I would argue everywhere but, in particular, around areas where there is a high density of children. A child struck at 20 mph has a strong chance of surviving. At 30 mph that probability drops sharply. At 40 mph it becomes lethal**. Slowing down is inconvenient and new but costs nothing; not slowing is a huge risk both for the victim as well as the driver.

Yet, the rationality butts solidly against the irrational fear of both change and cost. I doubt anyone really wants the town to be unsafe. I am persuaded that, deep down, all those vocally voicing their discomfort with this new system, know it is for the greater benefit, but do so in abstract, not in a reality where they are personally impacted by the changes.

For one, the complaints did not roll in for all the months that the plan of installation was being considered and only started when the warnings were mailed out. Automatic ticketing requires rapid behavior change, arguably the actual intent of the implementation, to avoid personal penalties.

In lieu of the cameras, there have been suggestions to increase police presence around the schools and adding speed bumps on the access roads - suggesting that those opposed to the cameras are not against the speed limit itself but they do not want to be held personally accountable (communal tax is easier to accept here than a personal responsibility) for a behavior that they have gotten used to, by an invisible enforcer. This also reflects in the many concerns about the camera operator being from a different town.

The nuance is that a police vehicle is noticeable. A speed bump physically forces one to slow down. But a mounted camera that is largely not seen? That is guerrilla tactic! One needs to be conscious, nay, vigilant of one’s own actions.

Most people these days are not paying full attention to the drive. The driving is background to all the fleeting thoughts on the mind. Especially, when driving on mostly empty roads, with the windows closed, it is easy to not have an embodied experience of the drive and mindlessly engage the accelerator. Thus far, we were not held accountable for this, and now suddenly we are, starkly. And, while aggregate data is compelling, few of us have personally been impacted by a road accident caused by just speeding. So the loss of ‘autonomy’ from our behaviors being observed is far more real than the potential losses of accidents.

There is a sense of loss of autonomy (even if it was an illegal behavior to begin with), the sense of oversight of personal behaviors by a unseen third party, the lack of recourse for advocacy (if it was a real human police officer, perhaps we could get away with a warning instead of a ticket), the lack of any place to hide (the surety of being captured for repeated speeding and escalating costs) and finally the real fear of how much it is going to cost ($65 for first offense and $90 after incl. admin fees).

In that context, telling them to simply slow down or to think about the kids safety, does not douse the flames of fear, it only enflames them more. Imagine being preached to while you are feeling down already!

So, what do we do? No system should be beyond scrutiny and accountability requires separating emotions from facts. I believe there is a need for transparency - due diligence into the volume of tickets issued, the consequences of this ticketing process, and clarity on recourse and appeal in courts available to drivers and owners.

Yet, given the intensity of the backlash, I am persuaded that, more than anything, people are feeling unseen and unheard because an automated system completely removes humanity from the equation - any grace for the offender. Speed limits are law. Yet, the issuance of tickets has historically been subjective, the prerogative of the investigating officer who considers intent and circumstances before penalizing. Removing that layer of relational discretion, lightens administrative load in one sense yes, but it does abstract it into being purely transactional, leaving the community feeling exposed and vulnerable, without protection, an irony in of itself given the intent of these cameras.

To that end, we, the town, council members and townspeople, need to continue to keep our listening ears on, tuned to empathy.

- Asha Yoganandan

* & ** Sourced from another post by a Fairfield resident, Patrick Smith - patch.com/connecticut/fairfield/fairfields-speed-cameras-56-crashes-114-000-speeders-whole-lot-bad-excuses-nodx