Photo by katmeresin

Mayor Vince Gray isn’t so hot on the idea of lowering speed camera fines to $50—proposed yesterday by two D.C. legislators—but he is willing to consider a series of graduated fines based on speed and past offenses, reports WTOP:

One idea being floated in the mayor’s office is a graduated system of fines where the fine for the first infraction is lower, but the fines go up for repeat offenders, according to Gray’s spokesperson Pedro Ribeiro.

“We’re looking at several proposals that focus on graduated fines for the rate of speed and the number of infractions,” Ribeiro tells WTOP in an email.

Another factor Gray’s staff is considering is increasing the fines depending on the location of the infraction, such as school zones.

While Gray declined to give any specifics of what the fines should be, he implied that they should be “severe” enough to make people think twice about speeding in the District.

Fines are currently graduated, starting at $75 for speeding between 1-10 miles an hour over the speed limit (though MPD doesn’t usually send out tickets for speeding within that range) and climbing to $250 for speeding 26 miles and hour beyond the posted limit. Still, there is no difference between a first and fifteenth offense: a camera will hand you the same fine regardless of how many times you’ve gotten caught before.

A D.C. Council task force that recently discussed the traffic cameras considered graduating fines based on how many prior offenses a driver has, but practical challenges emerged: it can take up to 25 days to get a ticket in the mail, so if a driver doesn’t know they’ve been caught, is it fair to subject them to higher fines for subsequent violations?

Gray also said that any proposal to lower speed camera fines would deal with the practical challenge of making up for the revenue that the cameras are expected to generate at existing fine rate.