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Living in Eugene, I’ve learned not to trust a green light before proceeding. Prior to moving here in 2018 at age 23, I had never been in a car crash. That changed for me within two years of living here, with two not-at-fault crashes: one caused by a driver running a red light, and another by a speeding driver.
You’ve probably seen dangerous speeds in our community, perhaps even the eye-popping examples of 99 mph on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard or 50 mph on Patterson Street. Driver behavior on our streets is getting worse. Combined with larger, heavier, more deadly vehicles, it is driving a public health crisis of traffic fatalities.
This perception is backed by data: In 2024, 22 people were killed in traffic crashes on Eugene streets, more than in the years 2019 through 2021 combined. Fatalities declined in 2025, according to preliminary data, but Eugene still has a long way to go to reach its Vision Zero goal.
When discussing traffic deaths in recent years, speed matters. The likelihood that a person walking will suffer a severe injury or death increases exponentially as vehicle speeds rise. Eugene’s own fatal-crash report found that wide, multilane streets and high speeds continue to present the greatest risk, and 36% of fatal crashes from 2022 to 2024 involved someone driving above the speed limit or too fast for conditions.
Street design is one of the most powerful tools we have to prevent traffic deaths, and Better Eugene-Springfield Transportation is all in on safe designs for Patterson Street, Highway 99, River Road and many more projects throughout the city. But — and this is critical — infrastructure changes often take decades. We also need tools that can address dangerous driving behavior in the meantime.
The Eugene Police Department is not in a position to do much more enforcement, and many of the high-profile enforcement campaigns are done using expensive overtime. Springfield police are in a similar position, and the Lane County Sheriff’s Department often has only two officers on duty for our entire Connecticut-sized county. Even with more resources, traditional traffic enforcement simply cannot put an officer on every dangerous corridor.
Automated traffic enforcement offers another tool. Portland has used speed and intersection safety cameras for years. Bend is now implementing a program that uses cameras to detect drivers who run red lights or exceed speed limits. Research from many jurisdictions has found that speed cameras reduce crashes and serious injuries by up to 44% along these corridors, and make it safer for us all to get around.
But there is an important question we need to take seriously: What happens to our privacy when cameras are placed on our streets?
In 2026, it is impossible to mention cameras without thinking about Flock Safety, a very different technology that is often confused with intersection safety cameras. Still, it is important to take this confusion and concern seriously. Intersection safety cameras are designed to identify and record only specific traffic violations.
License-plate reader cameras, by contrast, can capture information about every vehicle the camera observes. These are different technologies with different purposes and different privacy implications. And once installed, one technology cannot magically turn into another.
The city of Eugene’s Intersection Safety Camera pilot addresses many of the privacy concerns people have about automated license-plate recognition technology like Flock cameras. The intersection safety cameras only take pictures when a separate sensor detects someone actively breaking the law, with human review and data deletion as soon as feasible.
Still, we believe Eugene City Council should go further than existing state of Oregon privacy laws to alleviate potential concerns from the public and codify these protections into law.
To do this, Eugene City Council could look toward the template set by a proposed law in Massachusetts that has the approval of the Massachusetts ACLU. These bills offer a useful model for privacy protections that Eugene could incorporate into its rules. These protections could also be developed in consultation with Eyes Off Eugene and other Oregon privacy advocates to ensure they address public concerns.
Before the Nov. 18 Eugene City Council work session on intersection safety cameras, please email your city councilor. Tell them your experiences with speeding drivers in your neighborhood, and the importance of reducing speeds to save lives on our streets. Also, consider letting them know what privacy regulations are important to you if this program were to be implemented.
We have the opportunity to make real safety improvements on challenging corridors like West Sixth, West Seventh and West 11th avenues, with a fraction of the time and disruption needed to make infrastructure changes.
As we work toward zero traffic deaths, intersection safety cameras are a useful tool to get us closer to the goal.
