Should speed cameras add microphones to nab street racers?

We already have traffic enforcement cameras to track red-light runners, bus-lane cheaters and speeders. How would you feel if those cameras also recorded audio?

This is the latest potential expansion of automated traffic cameras, to crack down on souped-up cars inside designated vehicle racing enforcement zones.

Cities have the ability to put traffic speed cameras in areas where racing or drifting is common to try and cut down on the behavior, but now the Legislature is considering adding microphones to those cameras to nail drivers in cars with modified exhausts or engines that violate noise ordinances.

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State Representative Brandy Donaghy, a Democrat from Snohomish County, is the prime sponsor.

“It allows for jurisdictions to be able to use a different type of camera,” Donaghy testified before the House Transportation Committee this week. “It’s a video camera that is sound activated in order to identify vehicles that are above the allowed sound threshold.”

The enhanced cameras would only be allowed in those designated racing zones.

“There is a microphone. It will turn on. It will record three seconds, and then it will shut off,” Donaghy told fellow lawmakers. “It goes back into the system, and then it’s reviewed by a human being in order to make sure that it is actually above those allowed sound levels.”

Everett City Council member Ben Zarlingo spoke in favor of the bill.

“I want to emphasize that I’m not talking about regular street noise or the occasional loud stereo or rumbling exhaust, nor am I talking about things that are close to the threshold,” he said. “I’m talking about the trend in recent years for exhausts that are deliberately made to be extremely loud and harsh.”

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The goal is to nab more drivers involved in street racing, even if they aren’t actually speeding or racing.

Ramona Brandes represents the Washington Defender Association. She testified against the camera expansion.

“Although the cameras are supposed to trigger at a certain decibel, which remains unnamed and un-legislated, and only record for three seconds, Washington does not allow for the recordation of private conversations,” she said. “It is our concern that whatever amount of time these cameras record will record all audio in the area.”

There are certainly some privacy concerns with this. There are no decibel levels set out in this legislation as to what would violate a noise ordinance. Those levels are set by each jurisdiction.

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