Super Speeders: Mining Speed-Camera Data to Analyze Extreme Recidivism in New York City

Abstract

New York City maintains the country’s largest network of automated speed cameras, though fines are set lower than if written by police, and are omitted from license-suspension calculations, regardless of the number incurred. What does such a program design entail in terms of speeding recidivism, particularly at the extreme end? Mining a decade of publicly available speed-camera data finds that beginning in 2020, individual automobiles crossed the threshold of 100 or more camera-based speeding violations per year, 25 times the number that would prompt license suspension if manually written by police. Cross-referencing these ‘super speeders’ against traffic-violation data finds they average 35 non-speeding violations (including driving through red lights), as well as roughly $11,000 in unpaid fines each. The emergence and growth of this extreme recidivism indicates the need to evaluate and potentially modify the penalty design and enforcement of New York City’s camera-based speed program.