There’s a new report out that gives strong evidence to the idea that speed cameras help reduce fatal car accidents. The report comes from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and finds that implementing a camera program like the one in Montgomery County, Maryland, could save more than 20,000 lives each year, as reported by CBSNews.
The report estimates that Montgomery County’s program has saved somewhere between 400-500 lives since 2007. As noted in the CBS story:
More than 355,000 times in the last year, speeders in the Maryland county were caught by one of the its 92 speed cameras, but what got the attention of the IIHS was what the cameras didn’t see: a 59 percent decrease in the likelihood of a driver breaking the speed limit by 10 mph or more, compared to nearby communities in Virginia without cameras.
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The new report credits the cameras with a 19 percent drop in the liklihood a crash would result in a death or serious injury. It praised the D.C. suburb’s use of special speed camera corridors with multiple mobile cameras along the same stretch of road. Because those cameras move, police believe it lowers speed along the entire corridor and further reduced the likelihood of a deadly or serious injury crash.
The news is a strong sign that more widespread adoption of the speed cameras could help to mitigate and reduce the number of injuries and fatalities that result from car accidents nationwide. Additionally, it’s a potential moneymaker for the towns that implement the cameras. The speed camera program in Montgomery County has produced $123 million in revenue since 2007.
