The speed camera on Interstate 66 right underneath Virginia Avenue is a powerhouse. Last December, it nabbed an average of 80 drivers a day, despite signs that read “Speed Limit: 40 MPH. Photo Enforced.” That one traffic cam took in nearly $9.2 million last year, making it the most lucrative in the District. I have been one of those lawbreakers—hey, it’s an interstate highway; 52 mph feels like a reasonable speed—but now I’m extra careful whenever I approach that stretch. And that’s exactly the point, because most drivers never get a second ticket in the same location. Nobody enjoys opening that ominous white envelope from the Department of Motor Vehicles, with its creepy photos of your speeding car and the sting of a three-figure fine. But the strategy seems to be effective: A major drop in traffic deaths last year reversed a decade-long climb, and Mayor Muriel Bowser has called automated traffic-enforcement cameras a “critical tool” for roadway safety whose removal would endanger people. Though it’s hard to prove direct cause and effect, the data does suggest that traffic-calming efforts—including speed cameras—are making a difference. In 2025, 25 people died in traffic accidents in DC, down from 52 in 2024. That’s the lowest level since 2012, and it comes on the heels of a burst of new camera installations. In 2020, there were just over 100 in DC. By 2024, the number had risen to 477, and it’s now at 546, including 212 speed cameras, several dozen red-light and stop-sign devices, and a handful of truck-restriction cameras. More than 200 Metrobuses are also equipped with cameras to nab vehicles that block the bus lane. Though they certainly can annoy drivers, many residents seem to approve of them: The District Department of Transportation says it has received thousands of requests for new cameras from frustrated pedestrians. It can feel, in a tangible way, as though cars are moving around town at a slower pace. “It seemed like nothing was working, and then all of a sudden we added more traffic cameras and it’s easier than people thought it would be to reduce traffic deaths,” says Ankit Jain, DC’s shadow senator. “I think we’re going in the right direction.” But recently, the city’s speed cams have been facing an unexpected new foe: Republicans in the federal government. What had always been a local debate has now spilled over into national politics. Will these efforts by right-wing lawmakers scuttle DC’s traffic-calming efforts just as they seem to be starting to work? Speed cameras often generate a lot of animosity, but they haven’t always been a partisan issue. Some of the first in the United States were installed by a sheriff in Galveston County, Texas, in the late ’80s, though they were quickly dropped. From there, the devices grew in popularity around the country, generally operated by private companies that teamed with municipalities, dividing the revenues between them. Governments liked the money they generated; safety advocates touted their social benefits. Drivers tended to hate them. Even the most responsible rule-followers lose track of their speed occasionally, and you don’t have to be a lead-footed scofflaw to trigger that maddening flash. In recent years, some states have begun to enact bans of speed cameras. Many of these are red states—Texas and Mississippi, for instance—but New Hampshire and New Jersey have also outlawed them. Meanwhile, cities in ultra-red Alabama are collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual speed-cam revenue. DC started experimenting with the devices in 1999, with red-light cameras appearing at several intersections. It took another decade for speed cameras to join them in the District. (They arrived in the suburbs a bit earlier, such as on Connecticut Avenue above Chevy Chase Circle.) Vision Zero, the mayor’s program to end roadway fatalities, made little progress for close to a decade after being announced in 2015. Traffic deaths actually climbed most years since, reaching a peak following the pandemic. Soon after, the city went all in on speed cameras. Now citations have gone down along some corridors outfitted with them, and traffic deaths seem finally to be heading in the right direction. Yet the cameras remain intensely controversial, with many locals decrying them as a cynical moneymaking tactic. Bowser didn’t help that impression when, just as camera installations were ramping up in 2023, she redirected their revenue from exclusively Vision Zero projects into the general fund. Even though signs warn drivers that speed limits are photo-enforced and you have to go more than ten miles an hour over the limit to get a fine, many motorists feel like they’re being deceived. The city generated $267,394,114 in fiscal year 2025, nearly double the revenue from just two years earlier. And there have been examples of cameras that seem—to put it charitably—strategically placed. Even Ward 6 council member Charles Allen, among the DC Council’s biggest proponents of the devices, has mentioned one camera near the RFK Stadium site that seems intended to catch unaware drivers at a moment when they naturally tend to speed up to cross a bridge. (It raked in almost $4.9 million last year.) Accumulated fines can be catastrophic for a low-income driver, whereas they might be just an inconvenience for a wealthy one Then there’s the question of unequal impact, as fines have a far greater effect on poorer residents. Opponents also point out that automated traffic cameras are more prevalent in the city’s Black neighborhoods. A 2019 study showed that a driver in a majority-Black area was more than 17 times likelier to receive a moving-violation ticket than in a majority-white area, and a Washington Post analysis found that 62 percent of all fines were issued in neighborhoods that were at least 70 percent Black and where the average household income was below $50,000. An accumulation of $100 fines can be catastrophic for a low-income driver, whereas it might be just an inconvenience for a wealthy one, and the city has piloted a fine-reduction program for lower-income drivers. City leaders say there’s a clear reason that, say, Ward 3 has only 19 speed cameras while Ward 7 has 57, and it also has to do with equity: DDOT focuses on dangerous roads it refers to as “high-injury networks” and often places cameras at sites where a fatal crash has occurred. Because of careless urban planning and decades of neglect, many more of these roads—some built like highways—run through majority-Black areas. In other words, the argument goes, speed cameras lining Benning Road, Kenilworth Avenue, Texas Avenue, and South Dakota Avenue are not meant to target predominantly Black local drivers but rather to protect predominantly Black pedestrians. Until recently, the debate over traffic cameras was a distinctly local proposition—the kind of thing residents bickered about on Reddit and advocates made a case for on the earnest urbanist site Greater Greater Washington. Which side you’re on depended more on your method of commuting than your choice of political party. But lately, local issues have a way of blowing up into Fox News fodder. Last fall, House Republicans hatched a proposal to take away DC’s authority to use automated traffic cams. The bill was introduced by Pennsylvania Republican Scott Perry, who suggests the District could instead add speed bumps or flashing speed-limit signs on some of its less safe roadways. What is Perry’s issue with the DC government’s use of the cameras? “It shouldn’t be me trying to justify my position,” Perry said when I called him up to ask about the bill. “They’re the ones that are fleecing their residents.” Republicans who oppose the cameras often describe them as a violation of privacy and a cash grab. Some seem to feel that their automation makes them less fair than old-fashioned policing. (Camera proponents point out that being stopped by cops is often way more uncomfortable than receiving a ticket in the mail, especially for non-white drivers, whose experiences with police pull-overs can be fraught.) Until recently, the debate over traffic cameras was local. Which side you’re on depended more on your method of commuting than your choice of political party. But lately, local issues have a way of blowing up into Fox News fodder. That said, Perry’s ire is at least in part inspired by personal frustration. He explained that he’d received traffic-camera tickets while driving around DC, including one “uniquely infuriating” incident on the morning of Trump’s second inauguration. The congressman showed a police officer his credentials and asked to be escorted through some road closures to the Capitol. En route, the officer drove through a red light because no other cars were around. Perry says he followed the officer, and a camera flashed on his license plate. He contested the ticket but said DC upheld the fine. Another representative, North Carolina Republican Pat Harrigan, has introduced legislation to ban speed cameras on federally funded roads nationwide, and he also supports ditching them in the District. There’s nothing wrong with traditional speeding tickets, he told me. “If you’re out there patrolling the streets and you catch me fair and square, great, but don’t make the roads that we all drive—and I’m choosing my words here—don’t take the roads that we all drive and make them the first step towards totalitarian government, where Big Brother is just watching you everywhere that you turn.” Neither of those bills has advanced, so at least for now, their impact is purely rhetorical. But Politico recently reported that the US Department of Transportation is considering a ban on automatic traffic cameras in the District. If that happens, it still wouldn’t be an instant path to killing them: The proposal would have to be recommended by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, then included in a broader House transportation bill—but that’s a very realistic scenario. “There is somebody in DOT who has a need for speed,” Jain says. “They have the power to stop themselves from getting tickets, and so they’re using it.” Motorists who hate speed-camera tickets do have one other highly effective recourse, of course: Slow down. That may not help if you’re following a cop to a presidential inauguration, but otherwise it’s a great way to avoid a fine—and it makes things safer for everyone. But there’s also a deeper infrastructure issue. The reality is I felt a little too comfortable speeding through the Virginia Avenue underpass because of the road’s design. Perry told me he thinks most people using “proper judgment” will “kind of just fall into the right speed based on the circumstances of the highway or the roadway itself.” In that case, many roads in DC seem to send the wrong signal to drivers. Narrowing the streets, removing parking near intersections, and adding speed bumps and pedestrian islands would force drivers to slow down naturally rather than relying on the threat of a financial penalty. “I don’t think the only way we should be addressing traffic safety is by punishing people,” Jain says. “If we want people to drive safer, we should design roads that make them drive safer.” This article appears in the March 2026 issue of Washingtonian.The post Why Republicans Are Jumping Into DC’s Speed-Camera Debate first appeared on Washingtonian. ...read more read less