Speed Safety Camera Bill AB 645 Signed Into Law!

Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 645, authored by Asm Laura Friedman and cosponsored by SAFE, Streets for All, and Walk San Francisco! This means that starting sometime in 2024, the 6 approved pilot cities in California -- Los Angeles, Long Beach, Glendale, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose – will join 205 other communities in 21 states already using speed safety cameras to automatically ticket speeding drivers. 

AB 645 will allow a limited number of cameras in the pilot cities to be placed on high-injury roads, around schools, and on known street racing corridors. Once in use, tickets from the speed cameras would be issued starting at 11 MPH over the speed limit with fines starting at $50 -- far less than a normal ticket issued by a police officer, which typically costs between $238 to $490 in California. Tickets issued would be treated like parking tickets, issued to the owner of the vehicle through the mail with no points on their record, and it wouldn’t affect the owner’s cost of insurance. The first ticket for any driver in a city would be a warning. AB 645 would also allow a legal appeal process as well as a way for those who are low-income to have the fines reduced by up to 80% or even waived instead of community service.  

AB 645 is the culmination of a four-year effort by a coalition of road safety advocates led by us, Walk SF, and Streets for All, all co-sponsors of this bill. Asm. Laura Friedman has been championing similar legislation for the last three years as a co-author or primary author. It is supported by a coalition of over 50 nonprofits, including AAA, and scores of cities, state, and federal government agencies, including the NTSB. 

As detailed in a report from Streets Are For Everyone, speed has been the single largest factor for all traffic collisions in the City of Los Angeles every year since 2011, with a record 312 fatalities last year alone. Per LAPD (as of September 23rd, 2023), there have already been 225 fatalities this year, which is on track for another record year.  

Last year (2022) in Los Angeles County, there were 843 lives lost and another 4222 individuals severely injured by traffic violence (Source: TIMS). In fact, since 2011, the number of fatalities in Los Angeles County has soared by 63.6%. (Fatalities for LA County in 2011 were 515 per NHTSA.) 

Once again, the primary collision factor for all collisions, serious injuries, and fatalities in Los Angeles County is speeding – at 30.26% per Berkley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS.)

“Reckless speeding has created a public health crisis on our roads. While city and county officials go through the very slow and expensive process of reengineering streets to make them safer in the future, we need a way to protect our communities from traffic violence RIGHT NOW. AB 645 is part of that solution,” — Damian Kevitt, Executive Director, Streets Are For Everyone.

Speed cameras have a proven track record of reducing crashes and fatalities in cities across the US, per multiple studies. According to one study by the Federal Highway Administration, speed cameras reduce crashes on urban streets by 54%.

On behalf of the tens of thousands who have lost their lives and the hundreds of thousands who have been seriously injured by speeding drivers in the last few years in California, we want to thank Gov. Newsom for signing this bill. We especially want to thank Asm. Laura Friedman for fighting the fight for years to make this possible.