POLITICS: Team Trump moves to ban traffic cameras in DC — as NYC’s set to quadruple the dangerous devices

The Trump administration may soon reduce highway robbery by 95% in Washington, DC.

The Big Apple needs the same silver bullet because the city’s drivers could speedily be victimized by the biggest bureaucratic looting spree of the century.

Trump’s Transportation Department proposes to “prohibit the operation of automated traffic camera enforcement in the District of Columbia,” which would ban red-light, speed and stop-sign cameras.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) is attaching a similar provision to congressional transportation legislation.

The dispute over red-light and speed cameras goes to the heart of the question of how much harm politicians are entitled to inflict while they shake money out of citizens’ pockets.

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser promised in 2014 to lower the traffic-fatality rate to zero within a decade.

Her Vision Zero program slashed speed limits and imposed a dizzying array of new traffic-enforcement cameras.

Bowser’s program was a smashing success: DC government revenue from traffic-camera fines rose almost ninefold, from $30 million in 2014 to nearly $270 million last year.

Regrettably, the number of traffic fatalities in DC doubled in the decade after Browser launched Vision Zero.

Red-light cameras spark traffic collisions because drivers stop suddenly to avoid being fined.

Six years after cameras were first installed in 1999, “the number of crashes at locations with cameras more than doubled,” with 400 additional collisions per year, The Washington Post reported.

The cameras spawn similar havoc elsewhere. The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles reported that accident fatalities doubled at intersections with red-light cameras.

DC turbocharged its revenue from speed-camera violations by slashing speed limits to 15 or 20 miles per hour in much of the city.

The city also uses hidden cameras at stop signs. A single stop sign has generated more than a million dollars in ticket revenue.

Residents bitterly complain they get wrongfully ticketed unless they wait at least four seconds before daring to drive forward.

Due process be damned: The DC inspector general found the automated ticketing system was so out of control that “drivers get speeding tickets for violations they don’t commit and for vehicles they’ve never owned,” as The Washington Post noted.

Racial minorities bear the brunt of traffic-camera penalties even in cities with black mayors, such as Chicago and Washington.

“Residents in black neighborhoods were 17 times more likely to receive a photo [traffic-violation] ticket,” per the DC Policy Center, even though black neighborhoods did not have higher rates of auto crashes.

The National Motorists Association warned of automated traffic tickets, “The practical results for many poor people may be a lot like putting them in debtor prisons, unable to legally drive to work.”

The DC government responded to traffic-ticket hardships by offering a “community service option” where low-income traffic violators could pay off tickets by working for the city at the minimum wage rate.

Did the city plan to put people on chain gangs to pay off their speed camera debts or what? Would there be bonus points for singing “Take This Hammer” in perfect harmony?

“Community service” traffic-penalty gangs didn’t burnish Bowser’s image.

Her government launched a new program last year to aid ticket victims not living in the city’s fanciest neighborhoods.

But there’s a snag. Unless you’re receiving food stamps, the city won’t reduce or waive your fines.

That epitomizes contemporary social justice: Only people already collecting handouts get a free pass.

The city has plenty of working-class blacks and Hispanics, but they’re likely out of luck seeking relief from highway robbery.

And the same peril will soon be multiplying in New York City.

Thanks to Gov. Hochul, the Legislature in late 2024 entitled the city to quadruple the number of red-light cameras from 150 to 600 intersections.

“The red-light camera rollout will happen fast with 50 new cameras being activated at new locations each week,” Power105.1 radio station reported in mid-January.

One commenter retorted on Instagram: “Time to take out my paintball gun.”

A major reason red-light cameras spur carnage is because politicians endanger drivers by shortening yellow-light times to boost ticket revenue.

Numerous federal studies have shown that lengthening yellow lights is the most effective step to reduce collisions at traffic lights.

But as long as no one is tracking the body count, politicians get away with brazenly betraying the public.

Actually, they don’t always get away with it.

The Post headlined a 2012 report proving that many of the city’s red-light cameras had far shorter yellow-light durations than federal safety guidelines recommended.

Robert Sinclair, a spokesman for AAA, which produced the report, declared, “This is supposed to be about safety, not just raising revenue, and that’s what it’s become.”

The Post aptly labeled those short yellow lights “roadway robbery.”

Unfortunately, New Yorkers have no assurance the same recklessness won’t repeat with the new red-light cameras.

The city bureaucracy denied it did anything wrong in 2012 — except getting caught.

How many unnecessary car crashes and fatalities could occur if local officials repeat the same yellow-light switcheroos?

The Trump administration’s proposal to ban automated traffic-enforcement cameras in DC should focus national outrage on camera-ticket regimes.

The administration should deny all federal transportation funding to any locale, including New York, that knowingly sacrifices safety to fill government coffers.

“Taxation by citation” is a license for bureaucratic tyranny.

James Bovard is the author of 11 books, including “Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty.”