L.A.'s First Speed Camera Goes Up Outside an East Hollywood School

It's the first of 125 cameras, and drivers get 60 days of warnings before fines of $50 to $500 begin.

To reach Los Angeles' first speed-camera ceremony on Thursday, city staff and reporters had to dash across four lanes of quick, heavy traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard in East Hollywood. Once they got there, passing cars kept drowning out the speeches.

When the talking stopped, a crew put the camera up across the street from Kingsley Elementary School. It's hard to picture a better test site. The city's Department of Transportation, known as LADOT, began installing automated speed cameras there on Oct. 1. It's the first of 125 locations the city plans to cover.

The cameras start issuing warnings on Oct. 26, Streetsblog Los Angeles reported. Drivers get 60 days of warnings. After that, tickets run from $50 to $500, and the price climbs with how far over the limit a driver was going. Every camera site will carry signs posting the speed limit and warning that cameras enforce it.

The city's switch to installing cameras came quickly. On Aug. 26, the Globe reported that four speed camera programs were reaching L.A. County. By Sept. 17, the Globe's headline was "L.A. Hasn't Installed One Speed Camera. That's a Choice." Two weeks later, the city has one on a pole.

L.A. isn't alone. Glendale, Long Beach and Malibu are getting their own programs underway, too, according to Streetsblog.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, who represents the neighborhood, called the cameras "the biggest advancement in Los Angeles traffic safety in decades," Streetsblog reported. He told the crowd that traffic violence has killed more Angelenos than homicides for three straight years, and that a vehicle's speed is the top factor behind fatal crashes.

None of this was legal until Assembly Bill 645, the state law that allows the cameras. Laura Friedman, now a U.S. representative, spent several years pushing it through when she served in the Assembly. The law limits where cameras can go and how they run, and it was written with safety, equity and privacy in mind. Friedman pointed to the warning that comes before any fine. "These are not gotcha tickets," she said, according to Streetsblog.

The money won't pad the city budget. Ticket revenue can't go into the general fund. It has to be spent on making streets safer.

Lili Trujillo lost her daughter, Valentina, to a street race. The car was going 80 mph. Trujillo went on to start a group, Street Racing Kills, and she told the people gathered by the school that a speeding ticket isn't a punishment. "If you ever get a ticket it's a blessing," she said, as Streetsblog recorded it. A ticket, she said, means nobody went to jail and nobody died. It's there to slow drivers down, she said, "because all of us want to come back home every day."

Source: la.streetsblog.org, retrieved October 3, 2026.