The City of Portland is cautiously optimistic about fatal traffic crash trends as the transportation bureau reports a “dramatic drop in deaths” over the past two years. As of Monday (12/22), PBOT has recorded 39 traffic deaths, a 32% drop compared with a year ago and a 39% decline compared with the same period in 2023.
Today the Portland Bureau of Transportation said the trend is “encouraging” and that it might have something to do with a decline in excessive speeding — a behavior that spiked during the pandemic.
PBOT is also encouraged because their phalanx of automated enforcement cameras that had been offline since August are coming back. By tomorrow (12/23), 22 of the 39 (or so) cameras in the network are once again enforcing either speed and/or red signal violations. You might recall that back in August PBOT announced they would switch vendors and replace all of their existing cameras with new, more effective models. That switch is complete and now it’s just a matter of getting all the new cameras up and running.
This is good news for road safety advocates and for the City of Portland, who desperately wants to prevent traffic deaths and needs the revenue these citations generate. Enforcement cameras also happen to be a very popular program. Last fall, PBOT and the Portland Police Bureau surveyed around 2,000 Portlanders about the cameras. PBOT says 82% of respondents support using intersection cameras (speed and signal) and 76% support speed cameras as a way to enforce laws. The survey also found that 94% of respondents were aware of the cameras and 71% felt it was a fair way to enforce traffic laws.
Now PBOT hopes these cameras (from NovoaGlobal), along with all the other work they’re doing to make streets safer, will result in fewer people being killed on our roads. “If people continue to travel safely through Dec. 31,” reads a PBOT statement shared today. “Portland appears to be making significant improvement from the pandemic era travel patterns that saw traffic deaths by people in vehicles triple from 9 in 2018 to a high of 32 in 2023.”
In 2024, PBOT counted 57 people killed in traffic crashes, down from a 30-year record high of 69 in 2023. In 2019, the year before the pandemic, 48 people lost their lives in traffic crashes. The average from 2015 to 2019 was 41 deaths.*
Perhaps we are making progress. But it’s far too early to celebrate. For now, please just drive slower! If you do speed, there’s a much better chance you will kill or seriously hurt another person when you collide with them. Or if that fate doesn’t befall you, you might just receive a very expensive photograph in the mail.
*BikePortland’s Fatality Tracker has a higher number because I count deaths that PBOT excludes from their tally due to federal guidelines, such as collisions with TriMet vehicles, suicides, and deaths that happen months after the initial incident.
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I think this is a great thing if data can be managed effectively. I sure hope there’s a way to prevent ice from using this to target and profile vulnerable populations.
Weird, just ~12 months ago the idea of having cameras on every corner was praised as a way to eliminate racial bias in policing. Now it’s a bad thing?
There have been a number of reports of ice and DHS using license plate readers to target people for unconstitutional detainment and summary deportations. If we were living in a country where the federal government wasn’t actively shredding the bill of rights and ignoring laws with the tacit support of Congress and the supreme court, I’d view camera based traffic enforcement as an unalloyed good. But unfortunately, we’re backsliding into an authoritarian state with seemingly no guarantees of legal rights or constitutional protections.
I know you’re just concern trolling. But I guess I’m taking the bait. Fire away with some bad faith obtuse questions.
Do you know how hard it would be for the state legislature to require the deletion of traffic camera data not needed for immediate traffic enforcement purposes?
Not very.
Sure. But have they done that? Are they planning to do that? Until the state acts (and I’m not holding my breath waiting) Portland had better make damn sure they aren’t inadvertantly feeding data to the feds.
Also, if ice can tap into real time feeds (which supposedly was happening in Eugene, Springfield, and Woodburn) it doesn’t matter if you have data retention policies. You have to have a system that is preventing access by nefarious federal agencies.
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of accidental death in the country. We have to do all we can to reduce dangerous speeding and red light running, and automated cameras are worth the privacy concerns.
Car use is optional and anyone driving should expect that their car will be monitored.
There’s no need to choose between privacy and safety — we can have traffic cameras and not retain data unnecessarily. There’s no conflict there whatsoever.
agreed there is no need to retain data for more than a few seconds for any vehicle that is not being issued a ticket, as soon as the system confirms no violation the data should be deleted and no one should have access to the live feed.
Weird to think that Gron or any other individual poster holds the One Universally Agreed Upon Opinion
Maybe I don’t know something you do, so pardon me if I’m out of the loop. Are you saying that these cameras are constantly filming and sending that info to servers somewhere? What data are you talking about? These are more nefarious in nature? These don’t just detect a speeding vehicle and take a picture of that speeding vehicle?
I don’t know if they are constantly filming. Seems like the hardware would be capable of that if it isn’t actively prevented from doing so.
What I do know is that video feeds from license plate readers that are intended to passively track vehicles and flag vehicles that are associated with outstanding warrants have reportedly been weaponized by the feds in their attempts to round up immigrants or people that look like immigrants.
It seems like there’s a risk that these cameras could potentially be hijacked for that purpose.
Great news and a positive lead into the holiday week! Thanks (as always) for reporting!
Hey PSU TREC research students…this might be a potential opportunity to measure if a ‘halo’ effect exists when cameras are at rest vs active.
What’s TREC? What’s the halo effect?
Transportation research education center.
Halo effect would be investigating to see if traffic speed cameras have a measurable impact on reducing speeding outside the immediate enforcement area or an impact on reducing other kinds of traffic violations or crimes.
It’s a perfect opportunity for a natural experiment.
Two years is insufficient to declare a trend.
How many deaths were we supposed to be down to by 2025 under Vision Zero?
Great to see cameras operating again, but most of us want results not optimistic hopes expressed in PBOT statements.
Offline since August, only 22 of ~39 back online now — for one of PBOT’s flagship safety and revenue programs. That’s not “Vision Zero,” that’s basic operational failure. Merry Christmas, Portland
Are they stopping at 22? Or is 22 a specific milestone for this vendor and the remaining are in the queue?
You wrote, “This is good news for road safety advocates and for the City of Portland, who desperately wants to prevent traffic deaths and needs the revenue these citations generate.”
I was under the impression that all traffic citations in Oregon go to the state and get disbursed equally in order to discourage speed trap towns. Is portland able to keep this money?
I’m confused. What’s the difference in meaning between the phrases “traffic deaths by people in vehicles” (high of 32 in 2023) and “people killed in traffic crashes” (high of 69 in 2023)?
my gps notifies me of speed cameras (and also police activity on my route, objects in the roadway, etc.).
I’m pro-bike and public transport, but as someone who has to drive across town every day for work, so I can work for mostly wealthier people who often work remote or close to home, I find it unfair that I’m subjected to the risk of incurring traffic violations over small mistakes while they get to earn more without the same risk.
Saying that driving is a choice and you’re opting in to the risk of being monitored is very privileged. If the city needs more revenue, tax the wealthy!! Taxing driver is taxing the working class!
Think about an Uber driver for example. They spend all day on the road driving around wealthier people who aren’t taking on the risk of traffic cameras themselves.
This has been fun, but I will not be responding to any bologna. I’ve made my point.
This is a great way to destroy Portland. This is just another tax, “and needs the revenue these citations generate”. Portland is already the worst city in America for starting a company. Now it just doubled down and said, “leave”.