As CT Speed Cameras Bring in Millions and More Towns Sign Up, Concerns Linger

Drivers who speed down Route 66 on the border of Middletown and Middlefield are getting hit with an automatic $50 fine. The second time they’re caught in a month costs $75.

Middletown is one of the first municipalities in Connecticut to install speed cameras in town — but it won’t be the last. After the Connecticut legislature passed a law in 2023 allowing municipalities to install red light and speed cameras and collect fines from drivers who break the law, cities and towns have been presenting extensive plans to the state Department of Transportation in bids to procure their own monitoring devices. So far, 11 have had plans approved and three more are under consideration.

The 2023 law says that municipalities can install cameras that will capture drivers who speed and run red lights. After an initial 30-day period of written warnings, drivers who drive more than 10 mph over the speed limit or run a red light will be issued a fine.

According to the Middletown police, the area on Route 66 near the camera is a hotspot for speeders. The limit is 35 mph, but the police have caught drivers going more than twice as fast.

Towns that want to install speed cameras have to create plans that include quite a bit of information, including data on traffic stops and crashes in the areas where the proposed cameras would be installed. According to Middletown’s plan, the police department made 455 traffic stops over the last three years in the area on Route 66 where the camera was to be located.

From the time the camera went live in July through December 2025, the department issued about 46,000 citations for the same area. As of early December, the department had collected $1.84 million in fines out of a total of $2.8 million issued, according to Costa.

“The force multiplier that the cameras take care of is tremendous,” Costa said.

Costa said the cameras have allowed him to send his police officers to patrol other “hot spots” in town.

‘The only thing … that has actually worked’
So far, the state has approved traffic cameras in 11 municipalities — New Haven, Middletown, Washington, Beacon Falls, Marlborough, Milford, Stratford, Fairfield, Greenwich, Stamford and Wethersfield.

The municipality of Washington, a town in Litchfield County with a population of about 3,600 in 2021, was the first to install cameras. The plan submitted to the state said because Washington shares a resident state trooper with surrounding towns, the town needs additional resources in order to enforce traffic laws.

Richard Inniamo, Washington’s resident state trooper, said in early December that the town’s three cameras had issued upwards of 13,400 citations since May of last year. “People are slowing down for them, and that’s all we really wanted,” Inniamo said. He added that where people used to travel more than 20 mph over the speed limit, they are now staying within 10 mph to 15 mph of the speed limit.

According to Jim Bretton, Washington’s first selectman, in early December the town had collected roughly 75% of the $662,000 it has issued in fines. Bretton agreed with Inniamo that the cameras have slowed down drivers. He said citations peaked in June, a month after the cameras were installed. Since then, the number has dropped.

“Honestly, it’s the only thing to date that has actually worked,” Bretton said, adding that the town had tried installing speed bumps, and offering more education, to no avail. Bretton said the town saw the cameras as a way to improve pedestrian safety, a top concern. “As a rural community, we’ve got people out constantly with their children with their pets walking the roads. It was virtually every road was a speedway,” he said.

Data from Marlborough shows that the two cameras installed on North Main Street caught 8,600 speeding events between July and December 2025 and issued 6,500 citations.

“Speed cameras have been enormously successful at making that road much safer,” Porter told the Board of Selectmen at a meeting on Dec. 16. But Porter also said that state rules requiring the data to be erased after 30 days made it difficult to keep track of repeat offenders. He said he would like to see the time limit increased to 60 or 90 days.

So far, he said, the town has collected $186,924 after paying fees to the camera vendor.

The towns have contracted with a variety of vendors to provide the cameras and software. A purchase order from August 2024 shows that Middletown paid about $3,900 to the firm Traffic Logix for a speed camera. The town paid $4,000 to Dacra Tech for the camera’s operating system and will also pay the firm a monthly fee based on the number of citations and warnings issued: $13.50 per citation and $6 per warning. 

Costa said the cost of the speed cameras will be funded by fees from violations. Under the 2023 law, fees collected from traffic violations must go either toward paying for the speed and red light cameras or toward transportation infrastructure.

Privacy concerns
Privacy concerns have been raised, not only with the use of red light and speed cameras but with all surveillance technology. Late last year, the ACLU called for a temporary ban on automatic license plate readers out of concerns the information the devices collect could be used by federal agents for immigration enforcement or to penalize people seeking abortions or transgender care.

Although Connecticut’s law strictly regulates the way data collected by speed and red light cameras can be used, Dan Barrett, the legal director of the ACLU of Connecticut, said the organization is concerned about their use. “The pervasive surveillance means that so much more evil is possible,” Barrett said.

State law mandates that any data collected by speed or red light cameras can only be used to track those violations. It can’t be used, for example, to track someone who has committed a crime. Still, some municipal officials, while assessing the need for the cameras, have expressed concerns about potential collateral effects.

People who receive citations are able to contest them and ask for a hearing. There are six valid reasons under the law for overturning violations: if a traffic light was broken, a driver had to get out of the way of an emergency vehicle, a driver was directed to ignore the traffic light by an officer, the camera was calibrated incorrectly, the vehicle in question had been stolen or the vehicle was an emergency vehicle.

The citations are civil violations, meaning that drivers will not receive points on their licenses, and the violations will not be reported to insurance companies.

Slowing people down
It may be too soon to say whether the municipal cameras have reduced the number of vehicular fatalities in the state.

The Connecticut Transportation Institute at the University of Connecticut found that last year, 270 traffic-related deaths were recorded across the state. That was a notable drop from the previous three years, where deaths ranged from 308 to 366 people. Eric Jackson, the institute’s executive director, said there had been a renewed focus among police departments on ticketing speeders and aggressive drivers.

“It could just be the talk of automated enforcement has people slowing down,” Jackson said.