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About ten years ago, the now Mayor of Washington D.C., but then candidate for the position, made a promise that she would eliminate traffic related deaths and serious injuries by 2024. Now, as we have officially reached 2024, we see that this has not been done. In fact, instead the opposite has occurred; traffic deaths and serious injuries have doubled. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser dubbed the initiative “Vision Zero” and established a few different practices to help support the vision. However, currently D.C. is on track to match, if not beat, the 52 reported traffic deaths that occurred last year. The 52 last year was a record high, meaning if they surpass that range, the city will once again break a record.

Largely, the initiative relies on camera enforcement.

In an ideal world, the cameras that the city installed would scare people off from speeding, which would reduce the number of traffic accidents, which would reduce the number of traffic deaths. However, the cameras have proven to offer no real major benefit, as they have in fact not led to the prevention of accidents. Unfortunately, people disregard the cameras and continue to drive as they please.

So far this year, there have been 33 reported traffic fatalities.

Nine of the deaths that have been reported have been found to have occurred within 250 feet of one of a traffic camera. Furthermore, most of the deaths have disproportionately fallen in lower income neighborhoods with a majority population of people of color. Specifically, half of the deaths have been reported from Ward 7 and Ward 8. Analysts have been trying to find explanations for the accident disparity, but no formal report has been published so far.

Officials do believe that the cameras are proving to be beneficial.

Some argue that the improvement from the cameras will be a slow growing one, with the zero traffic death days expected to soon come. Others say that we are already seeing the benefits of the cameras and that other extenuating circumstances have led to traffic related deaths still occurring. For example, the acting director of the D.C. Transportation Department, Sharon Kershbaum, says “the cameras work” but that “a small number who flout the law” have been causing the fatalities.