COMMENTARY
Speed-cam bungle offers many lessons
By Dick Pratt
Why have we had to go through the speed camera follies? More important, what can we learn from this?
Advertiser library photo • Jan. 2, 2002
The answer to why this happened is undoubtedly more complicated than I understand, affected by events and actions I have not been able to see. People privy to those events and actions undoubtedly have other explanations. But from where I sit, this affair could have been avoided, and it offers some lessons. I'll set the stage for what I think these are with a few observations.
Failure to grasp the complexity of speed limits and their enforcement contributed to the anger surrounding the traffic cameras.
Like other areas in which there is a public need to regulate behavior, issues relating to speed limits and their enforcement are complex and multi-layered. There are differences of opinion among us about how carefully we need to obey speed limits. Some think that "the law is the law" and any deviation from a posted limit is wrong. Others think some flexibility should be permitted. Both of these views are reasonable, and both can lead to trouble when pushed to the extreme.
People with a strict interpretation may think they are able to drive the posted limit when conditions such as heavy rain or fog — or the vehicle they are driving, like a truck or bus — make that speed dangerous. Or they may insist on driving at the limit when everyone else is going faster on roads where the speed limit is set for the worst conditions or the most at-risk vehicles, thereby making themselves an obstacle and a hazard.
On the other hand, people who have a flexible interpretation of speed limits may decide to drive at whatever speed they think is appropriate or necessary, endangering others and undermining the very idea of a shared interest in agreed-upon limits.
Both of these examples illustrate something that seems to me to be inherent in speed limits (and many other kinds of rules): some bounded discretion is necessary for drivers and those who enforce the rules. Drivers need to pay attention to conditions and adjust appropriately. The police need to allow drivers some deviation from the speed limit when that deviation is not likely to cause harm. We might regard this two-sided discretion practiced by drivers and police as making up our "driving culture" in Hawai'i.
It is into this setting that the state Department of Transportation, following instructions from the Legislature, introduced a system of surveillance by cameras. The issue's complexity should have alerted the agency to the need to proceed carefully. This brings us to my last observation.
There is an important difference between a policy and a rule. The policy goal behind speed limits is to get drivers to travel at safe speeds. Using cameras to enforce the posted speed limit may follow the rule created for the policy, but it misses the policy because of the inherent need for bounded discretion. It is worth recognizing that tension between rules and policies is not unusual. It occurs in public agencies where public employees who need some flexibility to meet the goals of a policy are stymied by a gatekeeper enforcing a rule that in practice undermines the policy. In the current case, transportation officials started with a looser interpretation of enforcement without explaining the need for discretion, then switched to a strict enforcement of the rule that truly drove drivers crazy.
Turning now from observations to lessons, what can we learn from this?
First, given the inherent complexity of the issue, those responsible for implementing the program needed to be clear on the basic purposes of the legislation, and must organize their actions around those purposes. My understanding is that the camera program's objective (ignoring the part dealing with running red lights) was to reduce hazardous speeding, not to make everyone drive the speed limit. If that is the purpose of this policy, then the way the program has been implemented does not make much sense because it is oriented around speed limits instead of excessive speeding. That someone thought a private company should be given a stake in how many tickets were issued seemed fundamentally to have missed the goal of the policy. Moreover, if agency officials believed it could not be implemented without creating, say, due-process problems, then they had a responsibility to communicate that back to the Legislature.
The second lesson is that the state Department of Transportation should not have attempted to implement the law without consulting with other agencies involved with traffic. The most notable of these is the Honolulu Police Department, from which cooperation is necessary for success.
The final lesson is that public officials responsible for the program needed to do a great deal of preparation through consultation with the public. Agencies and residents have different kinds of relationships. Sometimes people deal with agencies because they have to. If they had a choice, they wouldn't. Delinquent taxes are a good example. Much of the time, public agencies are, or should be, in a relationship that is better described as a partnership. Here the agency is doing something that all, or most, of the public wants. In this case, the bill for traffic cameras was agreed to by an overwhelming number of legislators, a good sign of public interest in the problem of traffic safety.
Agency-resident partnership is based on the knowledge that most things public agencies attempt to do will not be successful if the public does not help. Partnership is what gives meaning to the idea of "public" action instead of "Here's another bureaucracy trying to do something to us," which is where we have ended up.
The traffic camera follies have a couple of costs. We may lose a chance to use technology to reduce traffic accidents and the pain, inconvenience and, sometimes, death associated with them. There also is the cost of a further loss of confidence in the effectiveness of our public institutions.
There are, however, good lessons that the agencies involved should learn and residents and potential partners of those agencies should expect to be learned.
Dick Pratt is director of the public administration program at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. The program's mission is to improve both public service and public institutions.
