New Haveners Speed To Camera Defense

Yale medical student Aishwarya Pillai ​“Zoomed” up to Hartford to tell state legislators about the crushed skulls and other carnage she’s seen patients endure in the wake of local car crashes — and to relay her own experience nearly getting run over on South Frontage Road while trying to leave her shift at Yale New Haven Hospital.

Pillai recalled those gory details in a virtual plea made during a hybrid online/in-person public hearing at the State Capitol, where a host of New Haveners expressed their concerns with growing road dangers and then called on the Connecticut legislature to enact traffic safety measures — including allowing for speed and red-light cameras — to help cut down on future car-driven damage to life and limb.

Pillai was one of 74 individuals to testify during a five-hour public hearing Monday that was hosted by the state legislature’s Transportation Committee. That committee is co-chaired by New Haven State Rep. Roland Lemar.

The hearing, which took place both online and in-person at the Legislative Office Building at 300 Capitol Ave. in Hartford, focused on two bills related to pedestrian and traffic safety. It also raised the specific question of whether the state should allow municipalities to use cameras and other automated technology to fine speeders and red light runners.

Time and again on Monday, New Haveners answered that question with a resounding: ​“Yes.”

“There’s been an incredible increase in fatal crashes throughout Connecticut,” Lemar told the Independent on Monday. ​“Speed, distracted driving and routine red-light running are having a dramatic impact on all of our communities” and ​“increasing police presence throughout the city of New Haven” is not the answer. Speed cameras in certain areas can, however, be part of the solution.

Read through those two proposed bills here and here.

House Bill No. 5917 is titled ​“An Act Implementing The Recommendations Of The Vision Zero Council.” The proposed law lays out new rules that would bar both drivers and passengers from keeping open alcohol containers in their cars; require all motorcycle riders to wear helmets across the state; and, among plenty of other things, allow for towns to buy technology that would automatically fine drivers who run red lights or speed by schools without need for police intervention. Click here to read a summary of the bill as authored by New Haven’s Safe Streets Coalition.

Monday’s public hearing was the state legislature’s first of the year. It featured plenty of New Haveners looking to advocate for safe streets come 2024. 

Newly appointed Department of Transportation Commissioner and New Haven resident Garrett Eucalitto presented on the potential legislation and fielded questions from the state committee, which was chaired by Lemar, who is proudly championing both bills. 

The hearing took place as the state has seen a sharp rise in the number of motorists, passenger, and pedestrian deaths in recent years. According to Eucalitto, 239 motorists and passengers and 75 pedestrians died on Connecticut’s roads last year. Those numbers mark a 41.5 percent and 31 percent jump respectively over the last five years.

It also was held nearly two years after concerns around racial bias and invasion of privacy led state legislators to drop speed cameras from another wide-ranging traffic safety bill that Lemar succeeded in championing into law.

During an interview with the Independent, Lemar singled out the intersections by Yale New Haven Hospital, as called out by Pillai, as well as those alongside Ella Grasso Boulevard and I‑91’s Exit 3 off-ramp at Trumbull and Orange Streets as a few specific sites he would like to see automated traffic enforcement. 

Many of the members of the public who testified Monday expressed support for the automated traffic oversight, deeming the technology a means of enforcing laws against reckless driving and thereby reducing preventable deaths. 

Some lauded cameras as a way to increase enforcement in lieu of an adequate number of cops on the streets. 

More desperately hoped automated fining could reduce the need for armed police to respond to infractions like speeding, arguing that motor-vehicle-stop interactions with officers too often end with violent outcomes — like the tragic murder of Tyre Nicols in Memphis this weekend after he was brutally beaten by a group of cops who reportedly pulled him over for reckless driving. 

Others voiced opposition to automated technology as an infringement of civil liberties and privacy.

Committee members present Monday primarily asked Eucalitto to speak to worries concerning over-surveillance of individuals and data suggesting that Black and brown individuals are disproportionately fined by such technology.

Eucalitto provided an overview of Sections 16 through 19 of the Vision Zero Council bill, which deal specifically with automated traffic enforcement. 

The bill defines ​“automatic traffic enforcement safety device” as a ​“device that produces one or more recorded images that capture the rear of a motor vehicle and indicate the date, time and location of each motor vehicle that (A) exceeds the posted speed limit by ten or more miles, or (B) fails to stop when facing a steady red signal on a traffic control signal.” According to the bill, fines for such infractions would amount to no more than $50 for a first violation and $75 for a second or subsequent violation. 

The proposed legislation would allow Connecticut municipalities to utilize such cameras in particular areas, including school zones, pedestrian safety zones and intersections of locations that are deemed to have significant histories of traffic crashes caused by violations of traffic control signs and signals. 

In response to questions concerning over-policing or over-surveilling of Black and brown communities, Eucalitto said that the state would help oversee where such technology is used in order to promote ​“factually based” installation of cameras to ​“target where there’s a problem” rather than give municipalities ​“a carte blanche.” 

For example, he said that the state would work directly with municipalities such that if a city like New Haven wanted to install cameras in an area that wasn’t already designated a pedestrian safety zone by the state or a school zone, the municipality would be responsible for applying to the state, which would ​“do the data crunching” to determine whether a site was particularly prone to traffic violations before ​“signing off” on the placement of cameras. (Lemar later said data from the University of Connecticut crash repository would be used to decide which sites were genuine traffic risks). 

As for concerns that video taken by cameras could be stored or used in other investigations or police matters, Eucalitto said that ​“legislation has made clear it’s to be used essentially to adjudicate the citation and it has to be destroyed after a certain point. It’s not something to be kept on camera or store, it’s not something to be FOI’d,” he said. ​“That’s not the intent,” he repeated. 

Section 18 of the bill states that the municipality or technology vendor must destroy personally identifiable information and data stemming from the violation within a year after any fine is imposed. 

Ultimately, Eucalitto pushed heavily in favor of the automated technology, asserting that data primarily demonstrates real-life reductions in dangerous driving thanks to automated fining systems. He referenced New York City in particular, asserting that they have seen a 60 percent reduction in speeding across school zones where cameras are installed. 

"More & More Residents Are Dying"

“Four people I know personally were hit by drivers in the New Haven area,” New Havener Ethan Rodriguez-Torrent reported during the public testimony section of Monday’s meeting. ​“They were all my age and were biking safely and legally… One died after being hit head-on by a driver.”

“We need a course correction” around speeding and the disregard of traffic laws, ​“but what we don’t need is more interactions with armed police in the form of traffic stops.”

East Rocker Rob Rocke described automated traffic enforcement ​“as the single most important item” in the two bills’ worth of ​“common sense recommendations.”

“I’ve been working on this for years,” he said of the potential policy. ​“Each time I come up” before the legislature, he said, ​“I’m more and more frustrated and more and more angry, and more and more residents are dying.”

Former Downtown Alder Abigail Roth said ​“the reckless driving behavior I see in New Haven is maddening… there’s minimal enforcement and nothing prohibiting [drivers] from putting lives at risk.”

She, like many others, noted that UConn’s crash data repository has shown that the state experienced nearly 400 fatalities due to cars in the past year. ​“That’s more than one person a day across the state,” she mourned. 

“On average, more than one Connecticut resident is killed every day in traffic violence,” added New Havener Andrew Giering. ​“We seldom learn the names of the victims. We mostly experience these deaths as traffic jams on the highway, or blocked roads and police tape in our towns. But each death is devastating to many, many dependents, family members and friends. Statewide, our fatalities are going up. We are trending in the wrong direction, away from Vision Zero. And we need changes that have a proven track record of reducing crashes and deaths — like in New York, where speed cameras in school zones have reduced speeding by over 60 percent.”

Pillai, meanwhile, said that she recently left her job at Yale New Haven hospital and nearly got hit by a car turning right on a red light. ​“My immediate question was why was there no ​‘No Right on Red’ sign?” she said. Then she looked — and saw there were three different indications of that rule.

“I appreciate privacy concerns,” she said. ​“But that region has lost its right to privacy if it’s coming at the cost of people dying.”

“I’ve watched someone come into the hospital from a motorcycle accident not wearing a helmet and their entire skull was caved in,” she said. ​“I don’t think it’s simply because of a lack of a helmet or lack of traffic enforcement,” she added, arguing that each element of the two bills put forward Monday could make a difference by ​“working synergistically.”

Carol Platt Liebau, the president of the limited government thinktank Yankee Institute for Public Policy, was one of several non-New Haveners to voice opposition to the plan.

“These devices should be out of the question,” she said. She posited that installation of cameras insinuated expectation of reckless driving and could easily maintain a ​“racial bias” despite the state’s mandate of ​“data-driven” applications prior to implementation.

“Traffic surveillance cameras start off in very limited contexts and then they start to spread,” she warned. ​“There are a number of other things that can be done,” she argued, like infrastructural changes made in response to traffic studies. 

Furthermore, she said, ​“everywhere these cameras are applied, people hate them and see them as government money grabs. They run counter to the way Americans should expect to live.”

Lemar clarified that money from any tickets would actually be required to return directly to the municipality and be used for infrastructural changes, such as road diets or speed bumps. Since one element of one of the bills includes a rule requiring each municipality to adopt a complete streets plan, Lemar said that the automated ticketing should and would work in tandem with that policy to encourage systemic infrastructure overhauls.

State Sen. Tony Hwang, a Fairfield Republican who Zoomed into the meeting, inquired whether Liebau approved of any element of either bill.

“I appreciate the goal of trying to improve safety across our state,” Liebau replied. ​“Safety is obviously an important issue. Everyone I know has had a tragic incident with someone near and dear to them involving a crash — my daughter was involved in a car crash,” she said. 

“Our disagreement is not with the goals. What I think is important to look at is the means being used to achieve any goal, however laudable.”