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City Hands Out 12,000+ Tickets in 10 Days After Installing School-Zone Speed Cameras

ALBANY, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 7: Signs alerting drivers to speed cameras are posted in a 20 MPH school zone on Whitehall Rd. near Albany School of Humanities on Monday, Oct. 7, 2024, in Albany, N.Y.
ALBANY, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 7: Signs alerting drivers to speed cameras are posted in a 20 MPH school zone on Whitehall Rd. near Albany School of Humanities on Monday, Oct. 7, 2024, in Albany, N.Y.

Make sure your speedometer matches the posted speed limit if you’re driving through Albany, New York. The capital of the Empire State has installed a network of speed cameras in school zones, and the city handed out nearly 13,000 tickets—each a $50 fine—in the two weeks following the program’s launch. But while it sounds like Albany is about to fill its coffers big time, most of the money is going to the company that operates the cameras.

Albany officials told local news outlet Times Union that part of the reason why drivers speed through school zones, which are limited to 20 mph, is that many of the city’s schools are located on four-lane roads used to drive in and out of the city. Albany doesn’t have enough police officers to enforce the speed limit near schools, so it’s setting up 20 cameras as part of a pilot program that will run through the end of 2028.

The first cameras began issuing fines on October 7, and they’re relatively generous compared to the ones monitoring traffic in other parts of the world. They’re active between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. on school days, and they issue a ticket only if a driver is caught doing at least 10 mph over the 20-mph limit. And yet, the camera system sent out precisely 12,895 tickets and 14,834 warnings from October 7 through October 21. Some drivers were caught speeding several times, including the owner of a 2019 Toyota Corolla who received a whopping 29 tickets.

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Put another way, the Corolla owner owes $1,450 and the entire system generated $644,750 in a two-week period that includes 10 school days. The city will only receive a small chunk, however: It makes $17 from each ticket and forks over the rest to the camera vendor. This uneven split didn’t stop Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan from budgeting $6 million in speed camera revenues for 2025, which represents approximately 353,000 tickets. If that prediction is accurate, the camera vendor that pockets $33 per ticket will make over $11.6 million from Albany drivers in 2025.

Albany is responsible for collecting the fines, and City Treasurer Darius Shahinfar told Times Union his office could get bogged down by drivers challenging the tickets. The fine is low enough that most people may just pay it and move on, and successfully contesting one sounds easier said than done, according to the report. The city will let drivers off the hook in a small handful of circumstances, including if the camera recorded the wrong plate number, if the car is stolen, or if it’s on its way to a hospital. Proving that your car is stolen should be relatively straightforward, but how do you prove you were speeding toward a hospital?

As of writing, only eight of the 20 planned cameras are operational. The remaining 12 will go live in early 2025. There’s a silver lining, though: Although speeding in a school zone is considered a moving violation, the tickets aren’t reported to the offending driver’s insurance company, nor do they add points to a driver’s license.

Despite all this, the massive number of tickets issued by Albany isn’t a record. In 2018, an Italian town logged 58,568 speeding violations in two weeks.

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