Oakland’s grace period is over. After 60 days of warnings, the city’s new speed cameras start spitting out real tickets tomorrow, targeting drivers clocked at 11 mph or more over the posted limit. The cameras, which went live in mid-January along 18 of Oakland’s most dangerous corridors, are part of a five-year pilot program aimed at cutting serious crashes.
According to the City of Oakland speed safety cameras page, the systems began issuing warning notices on Jan. 14 and are scheduled to start issuing actual citations tomorrow. The city’s site also includes a map of all 18 camera locations along with details on how officials say they are handling privacy, data retention and equity concerns.
The warning phase has already given Oakland drivers a taste of what is coming. Roughly 70,000 warnings went out in the program’s first month, according to KALW. That is about 1 percent of the city’s drivers and a pretty clear hint that a whole lot of people could see actual fines land in their mailboxes this week…