The town that turned them off — and the toll fell
In 2009, Swindon became the first UK council to switch off its fixed speed cameras. The predicted carnage didn't come:
| Swindon, first 9 months after switch-off | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Total road casualties | 327 | 315 |
| Fatalities | 4 | 2 |
| Serious injuries | 48 | 44 |
Casualties fell slightly. Somerset later reported a similar "no worse without them" result.
Source: road.cc (Swindon figures). International.
The honest counter-example
We're not going to cherry-pick. When Oxfordshire switched off all its cameras in 2010 (after a budget cut), deaths in the affected period rose from 12 to 18, and it switched them back on eight months later. In France, after "yellow vest" protesters destroyed a huge share of the camera network, the road-safety agency linked a 17% rise in road deaths in February 2019 (with the usual caveat that other factors were in play).
So what's the truth? The international evidence is genuinely mixed — Swindon and Somerset saw no rise; Oxfordshire and France did. That's exactly the point: "cameras unambiguously save lives" is not what the natural experiments show. The effect depends heavily on the site — which is why where you put them (see The Goldmines) matters more than how many.
Sources: BBC (Oxfordshire); CNN (France).
Americans voted them out
Where US voters got a direct say, they overwhelmingly rejected automated enforcement — often explicitly as a revenue-and-due-process grievance.
| Place | Vote |
|---|---|
| Houston, TX (2010) | Banned red-light cameras, 52.8% |
| Anaheim, CA (2010) | Banned, 73% |
| Cleveland, OH (2014) | Banned by roughly 3-to-1 |
| Nov 2011 ballot sweep | 7 of 8 cities rejected cameras |
And it went statewide: Texas banned red-light cameras in 2019, the bill's author citing due process — "the right to due process matters." Several states (Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire, South Carolina, West Virginia and others) ban speed and/or red-light cameras outright. Arizona killed its statewide freeway speed-camera program in 2010 after it missed revenue targets and roughly two-thirds of recipients simply ignored the citations.
Sources: Texas Tribune; Ballotpedia; Arizona program. International; the US state-ban list should be checked against each state's statute.
When cameras fund themselves, the mask slips
Britain's cameras used to run on "netting off" — partnerships kept their operating costs directly out of the fines. The government ended it in 2005–2007 because it was "too politically sensitive": it too openly tied camera operation to the money the fines produced. The result was telling — once cameras had to be funded from general budgets, the 2010 budget cuts led councils to switch them off. Cameras that were about safety would have been protected; cameras that were about revenue lost their reason to exist the moment they stopped paying for themselves.
This is the cautionary tale for Australia's hypothecated "road safety funds" (see The Money): the moment a safety budget depends on fine income, the system needs the fines to keep flowing.
Source: Road Safety GB — National Safety Camera Programme history.
And when they can't vote, they revolt
In Italy, a masked vigilante nicknamed "Fleximan" cut down 15+ speed cameras with an angle grinder, becoming a folk hero online. In France, the "yellow vest" movement damaged 60–75% of the country's speed cameras, at a cost to the state of €660 million. You don't get that level of public anger at a measure people believe is really about saving their lives.
Sources: BBC (Fleximan); The Local (France). International — reported as evidence of public sentiment, not endorsement of vandalism.