Here’s how many tickets San Francisco speed cameras have generated

Speed cameras generated tickets sent to more than 16,500 drivers in San Francisco in August, the first month those tickets came with fines, according to data from SFMTA — more than 600 a day.

That’s good for more than $1.2 million in fines, if they are all paid in full.

The speed camera citations come at a critical time for street safety. Speeding is the leading cause of deadly collisions, and last year, 42 people were killed in car crashes in the city — the highest number in almost two decades. At the same time, San Francisco police have come under fire for what critics say is a lack of traffic enforcement after ticket numbers plummeted during the pandemic and have stayed relatively low.

SFMTA officials say the cameras are not about fines, but about reducing deadly speeds. Officials also released data that suggests that the intervention might be working: A study found the incidence of speeding is down sharply.

August was the first month that the automated speed cameras generated citations with a fine, rather than just warnings. The cameras were rolled out starting in April, and by June, there were 56 operational cameras in 33 locations throughout the city, placed in areas with a history of speeding and collisions or near school zones and commercial corridors. 

After a 60-day grace period during which drivers were given only warnings, the city began sending fines starting Aug. 5. 

Though fines are being issued, first time violators going between 11 and 15 miles per hour over the posted speed limit are still issued a warning instead of a violation, in accordance with state law. If that same driver exceeds the speed limit again, they will get a fine. (Even since Aug. 5, far more warnings have been issued than tickets.) 

Taken together, the 55 cameras yielded an average of about 580 fine-bearing tickets per day through Aug. 31. As with red light cameras, the cameras snap a photo of violators and a ticket is sent in the mail to the registered owner of the vehicle. Fines range from $50 for going between 11 and 15 mph over the speed limit up to $500 for going over 100 mph over (although that most extreme speeding tier hasn’t been recorded yet). 

The data shared with the Chronicle did appear to come with caveats. First, said SFMTA, a technical snafu on the first two days of the rollout meant that some drivers who were supposed to receive warnings were given citations. Viktoriya Wise, SFMTA’s director of streets, said the agency was able to quickly correct the problem and not charge those speeders, but the error was still present in the data.

A second issue is that one camera seems to be missing: the camera facing eastbound on Geary between Seventh and Eighth. Past data showed plenty of speeders at that location.

About half of the drivers who got tickets were going between 16 and 20 miles an hour over the speed limit, a Chronicle analysis found, which incurs a $100 fine, though the amount is lower for people who qualify as low-income or receive public benefits. 

It’s unclear how many people were going over 25 miles an hour, which would bump up the fine to $200, because the data shared by SFMTA does not separate those out. Instead, it breaks out a bucket of all those going over 21 miles per hour, which are relatively few: just 1,500 of the more than 16,000 citations were in this category.

Revenue generated by the tickets goes toward maintaining the cameras as well as funding street safety programs like traffic calming and road improvements, said Parisa Safarzadeh, SFMTA’s communications director.

Just one camera was responsible for almost a quarter of all the citations given in August: the east-facing one at Bryant Street between Second and Third. The 4,087 citations that camera yielded were more than quadruple the amount generated by the second most fine-happy camera, which faces southbound at Bayshore Boulevard near the Highway 101 off-ramp. 

Wise hypothesized that the Bryant Street camera had such a high volume of tickets because it is near freeway on and off ramps and is a wide street with multiple lanes, both of which encourage fast driving. 

The posted speed limit on that street segment is 25 miles per hour, but those caught by the cameras were typically going an average of 39 miles per hour, according to the data. About 60% of the Bryant Street citations were for people going 16 miles an hour over the speed limit or higher.

SFMTA officials stressed that the cameras are not about making money, but about reducing speeding and making streets safer. 

Officials shared a speed analysis using small tubes placed on the ground that measure speed at a given location, a common method of speed testing, at 15 of the 33 camera locations. That analysis found that comparing a single day before the speed camera implementation with one day after, average speeds came down at every single one of those 15 corridors last month. It also found that the share of vehicles speeding by more than 10 miles an hour over the limit fell by a whopping 78%.

Safarzadeh also noted that two-thirds of vehicles that got a warning or citation for speeding did not do so again.

That’s difficult to corroborate using the data from the cameras themselves. Due to staffing challenges and software updates during the rollout, the number of speeding instances caught at each camera was not easily comparable month to month, and fluctuated significantly. 

Still, Wise said that the early data on speed reductions is promising.

“I do hope and expect that that’s something we will continue to see,” she said.