There are few people who would disagree with the assertion that Las Vegas drivers are among the worst in the nation. Using Big Brother surveillance tactics to issue those reckless drivers a slew of citations, however, won’t make our streets any safer. 

In this year’s legislative session, Nevada lawmakers will likely once again be asked to lift the state’s ban on automated traffic cameras in an effort to help reduce accidents and fatalities on our roadways. And at first blush, given how many times most of us have seen someone scream through a red light at the last second, such a reform might not seem like the worst idea. 

Currently, the use of red light cameras at intersections is banned as a means of traffic enforcement in the state — meaning local agencies are not able to use such technology to cite individuals who clearly violate our traffic laws. 

Cameras are used, however, to monitor dangerous intersections. And what they have uncovered throughout the years is a disturbing level of noncompliance from Las Vegas motorists. At one intersection along the 215 Beltway, for example, cameras identified more than 14,000 people running red lights in a single month. 

No wonder law enforcement and certain government leaders are so keen on reversing the state’s traffic camera ban. A cynic would likely point out that 14,000 potential tickets for running a light is a large financial incentive to do so. The far larger motivation for community leaders and public officials, however, is undoubtedly the risk such reckless driving habits have on public safety. 

Clark County Commissioner Michael Naft, for example, has said there’s “every reason to believe” installing red light cameras would improve safety on our roadways. Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill has said it’s time for the Legislature to act so the county can use cameras at the most dangerous intersections in Southern Nevada. And the director of UNLV's Road Equity Alliance Project, Erin Breen, has even pointed to the supposed success such technology has had elsewhere in addressing safety concerns. 

However, the claims that adopting a police surveillance state will somehow substantially lower the number of traffic accidents aren’t as airtight as advocates claim. 

According to countless studies and even software used by the Highway Safety Manual, red light cameras could actually make Vegas drivers more accident-prone, not less so. Studies have shown that, at best, red light cameras tend to merely change the nature of crashes that occur at dangerous intersections rather than substantially reduce them. In some cases, they can even increase the number of accidents. 

And the reason is simple to understand: Rather than blazing through a yellow or red light and getting in a “right angle” collision, individuals approaching an intersection with a camera tend to stop abruptly to avoid being ticketed — a behavior that leads to an increase in rear-end collisions among motorists.  

Arguably, such crashes seem as if they’d be less dangerous than the side-impact crashes that otherwise exist when individuals actually run red lights — but in-depth analysis shows otherwise. 

When voters in Houston, Texas, passed a referendum to remove the city’s red light cameras, researchers were given a unique opportunity to conduct an apples-to-apples comparison of traffic data and accident-related injuries at intersections where cameras had previously been used. As other studies had predicted, the results showed “a reshuffling of the types of accidents,” but noted that cameras did nothing to reduce “either total accidents or the likelihood of an accident-related injury.” 

In other words, even if one imagines an increase in rear-end collisions is a reasonable tradeoff for lowering the number of side collisions, it’s a tradeoff that has no discernable impact on how many people end up going to the hospital at the end of the day.

That’s not really much of a win for public safety. 

Making matters even worse is the fact that, despite almost nothing to show in the way of improving traffic safety, such automated enforcement schemes also come with considerable civil rights concerns.

As the American Civil Liberties Union has long argued, traffic camera systems upend due process protections for those who are targeted. When a camera identifies an alleged infraction — say, running a red light — it issues a citation to the owner of the vehicle, regardless of whether they were the ones actually behind the wheel. As a result, the process treats vehicle owners as “guilty until proven innocent” — a complete inversion of the way our legal system is supposed to operate. 

The second major civil rights concern is the way there’s often a financial incentive to locate and calibrate the cameras in a way that maximizes revenue for local municipalities or police departments — often at the expense of low-income and minority communities. 

Indeed, throughout the country there has been significant data to suggest low-income and minority neighborhoods have been disproportionately targeted by such camera programs. A ProPublica analysis of Chicago’s red light cameras found that households in minority ZIP codes received tickets at around twice the rate of those in white areas between 2015 and 2019. 

Ostensibly, there could be a number of legitimate reasons contributing to such disparities — such as inadequate infrastructure in predominantly lower-income Chicago neighborhoods. However, considering the tens of millions of dollars generated by the city’s cameras — and the documented cases of bribery and corruption within the program — such disparity is hard to dismiss as purely coincidental. The financial incentives for abuse, mismanagement and even outright corruption are simply too high for many to ignore. 

To be sure, Nevada’s traffic safety concerns are legitimate. We have more than our fair share of reckless drivers, red light runners and impaired motorists clogging the roadways each day. 

Risking our civil liberties with a camera program that has been easily abused elsewhere, however, isn’t going to get those people off the roads. In fact, according to the data, it’s not even likely to keep those troublesome drivers from crashing into us at the light — and wouldn’t that supposedly be the whole point of such an invasive surveillance state? 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichael or on Substack @creativediscourse.