A new law allows municipalities in Oregon to use their red-light cameras to ticket speeders.
Related: What You Should Know About Oregon's New Distracted Driving Law
Drivers won’t be fined unless they’re going at least 11 miles per hour over the speed limit, but the tickets can be issued regardless of whether the light was red, yellow or green at the time.
Gerik Kransky of The Street Trust, a Portland nonprofit that advocates for bicyclists and pedestrians, applauded the change.
“Speed is one of the largest contributing factors to the severity of an injury, if someone is in a crash,” he said. “And any opportunity we have to enforce safe speeds is an opportunity to create safe streets.”
Any speeding ticket issued under the law will need to be reviewed by a police officer before a citation is issued. That could serve as a limiting factor to the overall number of speeding tickets issued as a result of red light cameras, which otherwise could be enormous.
Testimony submitted in favor of the bill by the City of Beaverton indicated that in a recent one-year stretch, the Portland suburb recorded more than 90,000 “trips” through their red-light cameras that would have qualified for a speeding ticket under the new law. And that’s with just four intersections with red-light cameras.
City officials from Portland and Medford also testified in favor of the measure earlier this year.
