LTE: The Speed Limit Wasn't a Secret. Neither Was Your Decision to Ignore It

To the Editor:

There is a question that nobody opposing Fairfield's speed camera program seems willing to answer directly.

If you have been shoplifting from the same store for years and asset protection finally catches you, who are you angry at?

The security guard who caught you? The store for installing cameras? The company that didn't warn you a month in advance with flashing signs and mailers explaining that stealing is against the law?

Or yourself, for stealing?

The answer is obvious when the crime is shoplifting. It becomes mysteriously complicated when the crime is speeding past an elementary school at 40 miles per hour.

Fairfield's speed camera opponents have spent two months arguing about signage, flashing lights, warning periods, procedural notice, and revenue transparency. What they have not argued, what they cannot argue, is that the speed limit on Jefferson Street was a secret. It was not. It has been posted for years. During school hours it drops to 20 miles per hour. During all other hours it remains 25 miles per hour. Both limits are posted on signs that meet state and federal standards. The cameras did not change the law. They changed the likelihood of getting caught breaking it.

And that is precisely what has produced this level of outrage.

These are not people who didn't know the speed limit. These are people who knew it and ignored it because the consequences of ignoring it were negligible. No officer was going to pull over every car doing 35 in a 25 on Jefferson Street at midnight or 46 in a 20 during school hours. The volume alone made traditional enforcement impossible. Drivers understood this implicitly and adjusted their behavior accordingly. Not to the speed limit. To the realistic probability of enforcement.

That is not ignorance of the law. That is contempt for it dressed up as ignorance.

The demand for flashing lights and enhanced signage and 30 days of warnings before a single fine is issued is not a demand for fairness. It is a demand for the courtesy extended to a shoplifter who has been stealing for years: one more chance to walk out of the store before the cameras go live. The store doesn't owe you that. The town doesn't either.

You do not need a flashing sign to tell you not to speed past a school. You do not need a company to warn you a month in advance that the law applies to you. You do not need enhanced signage to know that the speed limit drops to 20 miles per hour when children are walking to school, or that 40 miles per hour in that same zone is dangerous regardless of the hour. You need to slow down. That is all you have ever needed to do.

Chief Michael Paris put it plainly: the cameras exist to slow vehicles down in school zones and improve public safety. Not to punish. Not to generate revenue. To slow people down.

And the cameras enforce both limits appropriately. During school hours the threshold applies to the 20 mile per hour limit. During all other hours it applies to the standard posted limit. Two speed limits, two conditions, both clearly posted, both enforced the same way they have always been posted and always been law. The only thing that changed is that someone is finally watching.

94,173 warnings were issued in May. Not a single fine. The town gave every driver in Fairfield and every driver passing through an entire month to adjust their behavior before a single dollar was collected. Violations dropped 83 percent once enforcement began. The program worked exactly as designed.

The shoplifter who gets caught after years of stealing does not get sympathy for complaining about the security camera. The driver who gets a ticket after years of speeding past schools does not get sympathy for complaining about the speed camera.

You were not trapped. You were not ambushed. You were not victimized by government overreach or surveillance or a revenue grab.

You were finally caught doing something you have always known was wrong.

Slow down.

Patrick Smith