OLYMPIA — In a visceral response to data showing increased speeding, drunk driving and traffic deaths, Gov. Jay Inslee said Wednesday that speed-enforcement cameras should be added to I-5 and other Washington state highways, where they aren’t legal now.
He told the Washington Traffic Safety Commission and his staff to research possible options, and come back with advice.
Though many voters are offended by electronically-generated citations, and state surveillance in general, the three-term governor will retire after 2024 and sounded like somebody with nothing to lose.
“We have a law, we’re not supposed to drive over a certain speed. Why should we not do that, given the carnage that we’re seeing on our highways right now?” Inslee said at a safety roundtable in Olympia, webcast by TVW News.
Preliminary data for last year show 750 traffic deaths, up from 675 in 2021 and steadily worsening since a recent low of 436 fatalities in 2013 — a record that’s far from the state’s “Target Zero” pledge to eliminate severe traffic injuries by 2030, and its history of being safer than national averages.
“I have a hard time understanding why we’re not saturated with traffic cameras,” Shelly Baldwin, safety commission director, replied to the governor. Privacy concerns are one reason for resistance, she said, along with a cultural norm that “speeding is seen as a very common behavior.” Cities aren’t yet using changes in state law that permit speed cameras for hospital zones, next to parks, and in general at a ratio of one per 10,000 population, she said.
The figures also show spikes in road deaths involving alcohol or drugs, as well as those where speeding played a role. But distracted-driving deaths have declined since the state’s ban on cellphone use took effect, from 155 in 2017 to 101 last year, Baldwin reported.
House Transportation Chair Jake Fey, D-Tacoma, said freeway speed-cams are unlikely to be approved by the Legislature in 2024. “We need to look at it, but it’s a steep climb for many legislators,” he said. Fey recalled a three-year effort and some arm-twisting just to get a pilot project for one speed camera in Tacoma, along East Bay Street near I-5 and Emerald Queen Casino.
In the 2023 session, the Legislature voted to allow the Department of Transportation to experiment with speed-enforcement cameras in work zones next year.
“Has the [safety] commission evaluated the ability to expand this project, to get at this terrible problem of speeding in our state?” Inslee said.
State Rep. Andrew Barkis, R-Olympia, said Inslee’s proposal is “news to me,” and presents many problems, such as how to pinpoint violators on a five-lane highway, whether the state can effectively collect fines, or even whether cameras will improve behavior.
“It’s just crazy on the roads,” acknowledged Barkis, ranking GOP member of the House Transportation Committee.
But the main problem, he said, is a state trooper shortage that Barkis blames on the defund-the-police movement, and Inslee’s vaccine mandates that led many state workers to retire or quit. He said GOP members were glad to support work zone cameras, but thinks they’re not needed on other freeways, if there are enough troopers.
The National Motorists Association, based in Wisconsin, opposes enforcement cameras as a whole. They’re often installed where the speed limit is unrealistically low, or is less than the comfortable speeds 85% of drivers travel, when drivers are just going normally with traffic flows, said policy director Jay Beeber.
“The revenue that comes from them creates a perverse incentive to not do the work to make roads safer, because they want to keep generating tickets,” Beeber said, criticizing Illinois in particular.
Inslee praised designs in Europe that warn drivers of camera zones ahead, and said the point isn’t to surprise motorists but to lower speeds.
Seattle has operated 20 mph camera enforcement in school zones since 2012, recirculating its share of fines (currently $237) toward pedestrian safety work. The city mailed $75 tickets to thousands of solo drivers who violated restrictions on the low-rise West Seattle Bridge, while the high rise bridge was shut down for repairs from 2020-22.
The city also installed at least eight cameras last year to catch drivers blocking bus lanes or intersections in the central city. Aurora Avenue North, which is a hybrid state highway and city street, lies largely outside the area that can have speed-enforcement cameras now.
Red-light enforcement cameras are commonplace in many Washington cities.
The safety commission has focused mainly on cities, because that’s where pedestrians are, and a difference of 10 mph to 15 mph can make the difference between life and death, especially for people outside cars, said spokesperson Mark McKechnie.
Inslee blamed “post-COVID traumatic experience” for worsening crash counts from impaired driving, while Baldwin repeatedly brought up a lack of law enforcement, and the state’s failure to enact a tougher .05% blood-alcohol limit. The legal limit is .08%.
The Washington State Patrol is down 212 commissioned officers from its full complement of 1,162, said Chief John Batiste. But with 43 new academy graduates and a new class of 60 recruits, he said staffing has shifted in a positive direction. The patrol seeks to train more personnel qualified to draw blood samples, and to increase crime-lab personnel to handle DUI enforcement, he said.
