State lawmakers recently held a hearing about a bill that would greatly help municipalities enforce laws against dangerous driving.
Will you help us pass this vital bill?
The bill, An Act relative to automated enforcement (S1376), is one of the Massachusetts Vision Zero Coalition's top legislative priorities. It would allow cities to deploy speed, school bus and red light cameras to better enforce traffic laws, a policy which has been proven to reduce speeding and unsafe driving, prevent crashes, and reduce repeat offenders — an encouraging sign of behavior change. In one study in Maryland, speeding by 10 mph or more fell by 70% in places with new automated enforcement measures. 400 cities in the U.S. have red light cameras, and 130 have speed cameras. (Learn more here.)
The Vision Zero Coalition sees this legislation as an important tool to reduce speeding and unsafe driving in a way that requires no direct interaction with police officers, and that includes privacy safeguards (i.e. cameras capture only license plates, not faces; data is deleted after 48 hours.)
The Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security held Tuesday's hearing. Join us in asking the committee chairs to please move this bill on to the next step in the legislative process!