On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assemblymember Laura Friedman’s Assembly Bill 645 into law. While speed cameras are widely accepted across the country and the world as a tool to save lives, authorizing them in California has been a challenge. This is the eighth attempt to authorize them in California since 2005 and the first to make it to the governor’s desk.

AB 645 passed the legislature with bipartisan support and earned the governor’s signature.

“This has never been about speed cameras. This is about saving lives, but the reason this bill was the first iteration to be passed into law is because of the extensive equity measures we worked to ensure were in AB 645,” said Assemblymember Friedman.

Oftentimes when people think of speed cameras, they think of red light cameras. However, these speed cameras do not take pictures of the driver, only the license plate, which means there is no facial recognition technology that could possibly come into play. Nor are there points on anyone’s license. Perhaps most impactful to drivers is the first time a warning ticket is issued and successive tickets begin at $50, with fines increasing due to repetition and velocity. Tickets are only issued to drivers exceeding 11 mph over the speed limit and will not be issued until the driver has had one written warning.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board, from 2005 to 2014, 112,580 Americans lost their lives to a collision in which speeding was a factor. In 2021 alone, more than 42,000 Americans died due to traffic violence in 2021, a 10.5% increase from 2020. Speeding is the cause of 31% of those accidents. In California, traffic fatalities and serious injuries increased by 15.76 percent from 2020 to 2021.

“For years, our community has been clamoring for new tools to attack excess speeding, and now we can begin to test one on our roads. This is not a panacea, but it will save lives,” said Glendale Mayor Dan Brotman.

Speed cameras have been proven effective at slowing down drivers, reducing collisions and reducing fatalities. In New York City there was a 73% reduction in speeding. A 2005 systematic review of 14 studies of speed safety systems in Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand found crash reductions of 5 to 69%, injury reductions of 12 to 65%, and fatality reductions of 17 to 71% at speed safety system locations after program implementation.

“AB 645 requires that cities use subsequent revenue towards engineering safer streets. After paying to administer the program, cities must spend the money on infrastructure to promote biking, walking, and slowing cars down. AB 645 prohibits cities from shifting existing expenditures on traffic calming measures to backfill the revenue generated into their budget,” said AB 645 supporter and founder of Streets Are for Everyone, Damian Kevitt.

“Thank you to Assemblymember Friedman for keeping up the fight over four long years to make our roads safer,” said Glendale Mayor Dan Brotman.