The District Department of Transportation is on the verge of changing the language in its traffic camera policies after a local lawyer beat a speeding camera ticket by discovering that camera readings may not be as precise as the citations claim.
DDOT proposed this month to alter its $100 ticketing threshold from 11-15 mph over the speed limit to “more than 10 mph” over the limit. The public comment period on the updated ticketing schedule ended Sunday, and the new language heads to Mayor Muriel Bowser’s desk for her signature.
The change comes after the D.C. Court of Appeals, the city’s highest court, sided with attorney Matt Ricciardi in May after he argued that the District cannot justify doling out the triple-digit fine because DDOT acknowledges a 1 mph margin of error in the cameras.
“The government has to prove the charge, and what the Court of Appeals found here is that the District could not meet its burden of proof,” Mr. Ricciardi told The Washington Times. “I don’t consider that a loophole or technicality. It’s just fundamentally the District couldn’t prove its charge, so it was dismissed.”
It all started when a speed camera on D.C. Route 295 captured Mr. Ricciardi driving 11 mph over the limit in 2023.
After receiving his $100 fine in the mail, the attorney said his background in computer science gave him an inkling that the cameras had a margin of error baked into their readings.
He typed in a link provided at the bottom of the citation and looked up the specific camera’s deployment log, which said that on the date he was flagged, the camera was accurate to within 1 mph.
Mr. Ricciardi said he first contested the ticket with the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles, then he took it to the D.C. Superior Court and eventually to the Court of Appeals, where he made oral arguments in November.
The high court ruled that the District did not prove Mr. Ricciardi’s offense was backed by “clear and convincing evidence” and agreed with the attorney, who looked up the camera’s accuracy calibration to see if the city had a legitimate case against him.
“The District is not free to simply regulate around that statutory requirement and ’deem’ that some modicum of evidence that is less than clear and convincing nonetheless satisfies that standard,” Associate Judge Joshua Deahl, a Trump appointee, wrote in the court’s May 7 opinion.
“The District can no more pass a regulation that counterfactually deems its speed measurement devices to be perfectly accurate than it could pass a regulation deeming everybody on the District’s roadways to be guilty of whatever they happen to be charged with,” Judge Deahl wrote.
The Bowser administration submitted the updated ticketing language on behalf of DDOT on July 8, saying the action was taken on an emergency basis to “preserve public safety and welfare.”
DDOT said the proposed ticketing schedule aligns with improved technology that can better pinpoint a driver’s speed.
“The Ricciardi case centers on regulatory requirements that have not kept pace with technology and current standards, rather than the accuracy or effectiveness of the program,” DDOT said in a statement to The Times. “DDOT is reviewing regulatory and administrative changes to accurately reflect the current state of operations and standards.”
It’s unclear how much more precise the technology can be, given DDOT acknowledges that technicians check the cameras’ accuracy every four days. The DDOT website also says an independent contractor evaluates and certifies the cameras’ readings each year.
Verra Mobility, which provides the cameras to the District, said in a statement its 3D radar and high-resolution digital imaging technology “is operated in compliance with all applicable laws and regulatory requirements” and delivers “a high level of accuracy.”
The accuracy of speed cameras has been debated in other parts of the country. Chicago ABC affiliate WLS-TV reported last year that the city’s automated cameras had a margin of error of 0.62 mph.
While that number may seem insignificant, the motorists ticketed for traveling 11 mph over the speed limit get a $100 fine, instead of a $35 citation for going slightly more than 10 mph over the limit.
In his court challenge, neither Mr. Ricciardi nor the city’s attorneys argued that he wasn’t driving above the posted limit. He could have easily been fined $50 for going 6-10 mph faster than he should have.
Yet DDOT levied the heftier fine against him, and presumably hundreds of other drivers, despite its recognition that there is a margin of error in the cameras’ performance.
“I don’t know that it was really a bad regulation so much as the District’s decision makers being aggressive in how they charged these infractions, and I think people can draw their own conclusions as to what the motivation for being aggressive was,” Mr. Ricciardi said. “I’ll just observe that the fine amount doubles when you go up to the next speeding range.”
Republicans on Capitol Hill have made up their mind that the cameras are a money grab meant to bilk cash from residents, tourists and commuters under the guise of safety.
The GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee advanced this spring a bill to shut down the roughly 550 speed, red-light and stop-sign cameras scattered around the nation’s capital.
The cameras have generated $600 million in revenue for the city over the past three years, while lawmakers argued they have made an inconsistent impact on traffic safety.
Metropolitan Police crash data says the city has had 27 road fatalities this year, which include collisions involving pedestrians, cyclists and motorists. It’s a 145% increase from the 11 recorded at this time last year.
Further, the 52 traffic fatalities documented in 2023 and 2024 were the most the city had recorded since 54 in 2007.
The bill that would unplug the cameras has yet to be taken up by the full House.
Reports said the federal government could try to dismantle the District’s network of traffic cameras by including a provision in a surface transportation bill. The federal bill would need to be voted on before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
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