Iowa DOT approves new traffic camera rules

Iowa DOT’s Transportation Commission has unanimously approved proposed rules for red light and speed cameras that require cities to prove the devices are needed to improve safety on highways. The rules require a city to perform an engineering analysis of the highway and also present some alternatives to the cameras to address any safety issues. Cities that currently have cameras installed would have to do the engineering study by May 2014. The rules must still go through the legislative approval process
December 11, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
Iowa DOT’s Transportation Commission has unanimously approved proposed rules for red light and speed cameras that require cities to prove the devices are needed to improve safety on highways.

The rules require a city to perform an engineering analysis of the highway and also present some alternatives to the cameras to address any safety issues. Cities that currently have cameras installed would have to do the engineering study by May 2014. The rules must still go through the legislative approval process before being enacted.

Iowa is the only state in the US that allows cameras to be permanently installed along interstate roads or highways managed by the state. However, the state has no laws governing their use, leaving the decision to county supervisors and city councils to decide whether to install them.

Nine Iowa cities as well as Polk County use a mix of fixed and mobile cameras on state-run roads or interstate highways.
Detection, Monitoring & Machine Vision Enforcement

Related Content

  • Connected vehicle technology the solution to safety?
    January 25, 2012
    A series of 'driver clinics' is under way across five states, as vehicle manufacturers and the US Government pin their hopes on connected vehicles becoming the next big advance in road safety. Pete Goldin reports. What would a car say if it could talk? Its first words might be: "Here I am". Many vehicles are communicating that very message to each other right now. Admittedly, this is in controlled environments of US Department of Transportation (USDoT) tests, but within the next few years 'connected vehicle
    Read More
  • Traffic monitoring and hard shoulder running
    March 1, 2013
    Hard shoulder running is on the increase – and the detection and monitoring of incidents on affected roads is occupying the minds of experts across Europe and the US
    Read More
  • Negative report for road safety cameras
    October 23, 2015
    An audit of the state’s speed cameras has found that the Queensland Police Service (QPS) and the Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) in Australia have strayed from best practice in using the devices to reduce speeding, with a resultant effect on road safety, according to PSNews online. In his report Road Safety: Traffic Cameras, Acting Auditor-General, Anthony Close found that in the past seven years the QPS had issued 3,760,962 speeding tickets from camera-based evidence, with TMR collecting AU
    Read More
  • US incident management needs national standardisation
    January 26, 2012
    I-95 Corridor Coalition's Tom Martin discusses the state of the art in incident management and what visitors to this year's ITS World Congress can expect of the first ever Emergency Responder-Incident Management Day. Developments in incident management are driven in the main by need. A bald statement, and one which holds no surprises, it nevertheless quantifies the evolutionary process within the I-95 Corridor Coalition over the last decade and more. Spread over 16 states from Maine to Florida, the Coalitio
    Read More

Highlighted Content