The number of drivers who run stop signs has declined since the city installed cameras at five intersections in February and started issuing tickets in mid-March.
At one of the intersections—College and Yale avenues—violations have dropped by approximately 68% since the cameras were installed, according to Jatinder Khokhar, the city’s public services director, who spoke at a May 5 College Park City Council meeting.
“To see a 68% decrease in one location is just—it’s phenomenal,” Mayor Pro Tem Maria Mackie (District 4) said. “It shows that people are paying attention.”
Councilmember Ray Ranker (District 3) noted that such attention can translate into protecting pedestrians and preventing accidents.
“We have to look at the compliance rate,” Ranker said. “If the compliance is up, the neighborhoods are safer.”
At that intersection, the AI-powered cameras detected 31,451 drivers who did not stop at the stop signs from Feb. 15 to March 15, when violators received warnings instead of fines, according to Deputy City Manager Michelle Bailey Hedgepeth, who presented the statistics to the council.
She said that intersection generated approximately 29% of all citations since the cameras came online.
Still, not all drivers who did not come to a complete stop got tickets, Hedgepeth said.
Data presented at Tuesday’s city council meeting showed that during the first month of ticketing, police officers who examined the AI data tossed out 3,900 potential violations. The high rejection rate led city staff to adjust the cameras’ algorithm to ensure only higher-speed drivers are penalized.
“This is always monitored directly by an officer,” Hedgepeth said. “Every single violation is looked at by the officers. After that, we decided that we would look at why … the rejection was so high. And we ended up looking at the format and the speed that people were going.”
The rejections centered largely on the “stutter stop”—a driver who slows significantly but fails to come to a multi-second halt. Hedgepeth acknowledged that while many drivers were taught to count to three before moving through a stop sign, the law is more focused on the movement of the vehicle.
“The one interesting part about stop sign cameras is that you kind of think of it that you have to stop [and] you got to go, ‘One, Mississippi, two, Mississippi, three, Mississippi,'” Hedgepeth said. “That’s what I do because I don’t want to get a ticket. But it’s really the fact that the wheels must stop. It can be, like, one second, but as long as the wheels stop, you have … been able to stop.”
Khokhar explained that the officers review footage through a lens of real-world fairness.
He said the officers told him, “If I won’t give this person a ticket if I’m sitting in my car parked right next to it, then I’m just not going to do [it] by seeing the video.”
The AI system was flagging anyone who rolled through a stop sign, even at speeds as slow as a fraction of one mile per hour, even though those inching forward at 0.1 through 5 mph are considered low-level violators.
By adjusting the algorithm threshold by “less than a mile,” the city saw total violations drop from 12,000 during the February warning period to fewer than 6,000 in late April, Hedgepeth said.
Still, she emphasized that even a few miles per hour can mean the difference between a minor accident and a tragedy.
“At a speed of three or four miles per hour, you’re less likely to have a severe injury,” she said. “And that’s what we want to do, is to reduce injuries of our residents and our students here.”
Officials noted that the most dangerous behaviors—of drivers blowing through intersections at speeds greater than 12 mph—are also on the decline.
“The number of high-level violations has decreased significantly,” Hedgepeth said. “It’s almost, like, less than a third.”
Data from the first 30 days of camera enforcement indicate that the majority of those ticketed do not live in College Park. In fact, residents accounted for 17% of citations, while 39% of violators live in nearby jurisdictions and 44% are from out of state.
“People who tend to run stop signs are people that are maybe running through your neighborhoods or might be using [local roads] as cut-throughs,” Hedgepeth told the council. “The Waze users go through your streets and blow through a stop sign.”
Khokhar said the data will show where risky behavior is dropping and could indicate that it’s time to relocate cameras to other intersections throughout the city.
“People will learn what is a risky behavior versus a non-risky behavior,” he said. “We can switch off one location, you know, if we think compliance has been achieved.”
College Park also has speed cameras along six major stretches of roads throughout the city. Hedgepeth advised councilmembers that they could pass an ordinance to add cameras to red lights to catch drivers who run through them without stopping.
Hedgepeth noted that cameras are a way for the city to keep its streets safe.
“Our goal is to have zero citations,” Hedgepeth told the council. “If we have zero citations, then we have 100 percent compliance. And that means our streets are safe.”