The intersection of Congress and Sudbury streets is one of the many crossings where all the trappings that make driving in Boston so notorious converge: long queues of cars, their impatient drivers honking horns and cheating into the bus lanes as mopeds weave through the stalled traffic and pedestrians dodge the vehicles ignoring the no-turn-on-red sign.
In the span of 30 minutes on a recent December afternoon, within sight of City Hall, more than 20 motorists raced through a red light with no sign of enforcement, despite a Boston police station just a few yards away on Sudbury Street.
From her perch at the neighboring Boston Public Market, Naomi Cannistraci, 57, owner of The Popover Lady, witnesses the traffic mayhem every day and said the proximity to the police station “makes no difference. People don’t care.”
Such driving seems to have become accepted practice in Boston and many other places in Massachusetts. But, had those drivers been in Providence, New York City, Chicago, or hundreds of other communities outside Massachusetts, they would likely have gotten a ticket — not from a police officer, but from an automated enforcement system that captured their traffic violation on camera.
Using the technology for traffic violations is not allowed under state law in Massachusetts. But, increasingly, some municipal leaders say it’s time to change that.
“We have an epidemic of dangerous behavior on our roads,” said Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Boston’s chief of streets. “Automated enforcement is a proven way to improve safety. We should take advantage of it here in Boston.”
Communities in 23 states use cameras for red light violations; cities and towns in 22 states allow their use to catch speeders, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Proponents argue camera-based traffic policing enhances safety, helps lessen the strain on law enforcement, and can even reduce the risk of racial bias in traffic enforcement.
Typically, the captured images are reviewed by authorities before a citation is issued, and in most states, those are usually treated as a nonmoving violation.
For years, bills to allow traffic cameras in Massachusetts have languished at the State House, unable to overcome concerns about invasion of privacy, targeting communities of color, zealous use by municipalities to generate revenue, and general uncertainty about the efficacy of cameras.
“People always assume the worst, right? They assume they’re going to be installed in sort of ‘gotcha’ places,” said state Senator Will Brownsberger of Belmont, who has proposed creating a pilot program in 10 communities. “The truth is, these things are going to be installed where they’re asked for.”
Brownsberger said his bill includes safeguards to ensure privacy protections, such as not photographing the front of a vehicle and destroying visual evidence after a citation is complete. Maximum fines would be $25 and violators would not be dinged on their insurance coverage. In 2025, he plans on introducing a simplified version.
The problem, Brownsberger said, is that such driving behavior has become embedded in the culture here.
“We all are sort of aware that there’s very little traffic enforcement,” he said. “We tend to push the limits or go beyond. That needs to change.”
But some lawmakers have doubts about the technology.
State Representative William Straus, who is stepping down as chairman of the Joint Committee on Transportation and retiring after more than three decades on Beacon Hill, said there is “a lack of consensus that you’re improving public safety” by using automated enforcement, referring to some studies that show an uptick in rear-end crashes after red light cameras are installed. “When they see a yellow light, they stop ... sooner than the rest of the drivers behind them expect,” the Mattapoisett Democrat said.
Still, Straus is supportive of using license plate-reading cameras on public transit buses to curb illegal parking in bus lanes and stops, viewing it more as a congestion issue.
While Boston has reported a decline in traffic deaths and injuries over the past decade, there has been a modest uptick in crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists, Franklin-Hodge said. The city averages about 1,900 serious or fatal crashes annually, and so far this year, 11 pedestrians have been killed in incidents with vehicles, according to public records and news reports.
Another supporter of automated enforcement, City Councilor Enrique Pepén, a Democrat who represents Hyde Park and parts of Roslindale and Mattapan, asked lawmakers in September to allow districts to use cameras on school buses, noting the risks to students when they board and disembark. Pepén said he did “not want to fear” his son and daughter getting hit by a careless motorist.
Peabody and Salem are testing cameras on school buses, though they are not issuing fines. In the first six weeks of the school year, the cameras recorded hundreds of drivers failing to stop for school buses, according to BusPatrol, the company partnering with the districts.
Boston has previously asked the Legislature for permission to use road safety cameras, and Cambridge has filed a similar request. Surveillance cameras for police investigations are already used throughout Boston.
In 1994, New York City was first in the country to use enforcement cameras for red light violations. Since then, violations at intersections with cameras have declined by 73 percent. T-bone crashes have dropped by 65 percent, and, at least in New York City’s experience, rear-end crashes declined, not increased, by 49 percent at locations with cameras. The city has since deployed speed cameras in hundreds of school zones. Studies found an immediate drop in injuries, fatalities, and excessive speeding violations compared to control areas with no cameras.
Nationwide, studies have shown that speed cameras can reduce roadway deaths and injuries by 20 percent to 37 percent, depending on the type of system used, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
Another factor in these lean times for municipal budgets: cameras cost less than police officers. A red-light camera costs anywhere from $60,000 to $150,000 and it can work 24 hours a day. By comparison, the median salary for a police officer in Boston was $142,000 in 2023, according to the latest city figures.
In New York City, speed cameras generated $228 million from fines over eight years.
Police departments across the country are also facing staffing shortages, said Matthew Ross, an associate professor at Northeastern University whose research focuses on policing and the criminal justice system. Additionally, many police units have scaled back on traffic stops, or focused on more equitable policies, following the scrutiny of police tactics in the death of George Floyd.
If cameras are evenly distributed across neighborhoods, automated enforcement could potentially remove the element of implicit racial bias, Ross said.
Last year, Lindiwe Rennert, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, a D.C.-based think tank, published a study of the views of leaders in Boston’s Black community on camera enforcement programs. Many said they were uncomfortable with law enforcement having access to the data collected.
Still, the overriding consensus was that roadway safety was in major need of improvement in their neighborhoods. Moreover, younger adults told Rennert that “cameras do not carry firearms” and have a “lower likelihood of racial discrimination.”
Edy Rees, 82, a retired therapist who lives in Roslindale, thinks it’s time for cameras in Boston. She walks with a cane and said crossing a street, even in a crosswalk, “terrifies me.”
“Sometimes I can walk pretty fast, sometimes I can’t. These old joints, you know, you never know what they’re going to do,” Rees said.
One recent afternoon, she counted a dozen cars parked in the bus lane on Washington Street between Roslindale Square and Forest Hills. On another day, she saw vehicles zooming past a school bus, even as young children exited.
They were standing there, Rees said, “holding each other’s hands, sort of looking at each other, like, now what do we do?”
Shannon Larson can be reached at shannon.larson@globe.com. Follow her @shannonlarson98.