What to do if you get caught by a Phoenix speed enforcement camera

You’re driving down 7th Street just past Osborn Road. It’s late at night and the roads are empty. There isn’t a soul in sight. So you speed up, your windows down and music cranked. It’s your road tonight.

That is, until a few weeks later, when you get a notice in the mail. It was not your road at all. It was their road. They caught you.

Phoenix’s new speed cameras, that is. 

Phoenix brought back its speed cameras in February after previously ditching them in 2019. Following a month of sending out warnings, the cameras went into full enforcement last week, targeting drivers going 11 miles per hour or more over the speed limit. 

The 17 cameras are placed strategically around the city. Eight are in 15-mile-an-hour school zones and will be moved weekly, while the other nine are on stretches of road identified by the city as having a history of speed-involved crashes. They will be moved every six months or as needed, and their locations are listed on a website created by the city. 

According to a press release, those nine cameras caught 70,000 instances of speeding during the 30-day warning period. A few of them have also been vandalized, including one that was hit with gunfire. 

It’s a bleak and expensive future for Phoenix’s speed demons. Or is it? Do you really need to pay the ticket when it shows up in the mail?

Here’s what you need to know about Phoenix’s new speed cameras.

Who is running Phoenix’s speed enforcement cameras?

Phoenix hired Verra Mobility to run its safety cameras. The company is responsible for everything to do with the cameras’ operation: Placing them, repairing them, mailing out citations and even serving violators who ignore those citations.

What is Verra Mobility getting paid to run Phoenix’s speed cameras?

According to the city’s contract with Verra Mobility, the city will pay the company $3,000 a month per camera, of which there are 17. That comes out to $612,200 a year.

But that’s not all: Verra Mobility also gets $20 for each ticket that is paid. If all 70,000 speeding drivers who got warnings during the probationary period had paid their ticket — a rate of compliance the city will never come close to approaching — Verra Mobility would have made an additional $1.4 million.

If I get a citation in the mail from a Phoenix speed camera, do I have to pay it?

It’s complicated, but you shouldn’t just automatically pay it, says Ryan Cummings, the lead attorney and founding partner of the R&R Law Group, which published a guide to photo radar tickets.

“It’s a pretty big money maker,” Cummings told Phoenix New Times. “A lot of people just pay it.” 

The citation that arrives in the mail is a valid ticket, but it’s not a valid complaint because the speeding tickets issued by the cameras are civil in nature, not criminal. That means you need to be served in person for it to be valid — unlike a criminal summons, which can be mailed. The city and Verra Mobility have 60 days to notify the court of your violation and another 90 days once they do so to serve you with the citation. If they miss their deadline, your ticket is dropped.

If it’s your first ticket, your two best options are to elect to take a defensive driving course or wait. If you choose the defensive driving course, you’ll pay to take the course and will not get points on your license. If you wait, the city might never serve you in person and the ticket will go away.

What shouldn’t I do if I get a ticket?

Don’t call the court asking for more info and don’t automatically pay it. If you call the court asking for more information, you’re acknowledging that you received the citation and it is no longer necessary to serve you with the complaint.

If you pay it, not only will you be out the money, but you’ll also get points on your license.

How does getting a ticket affect my license?

Each ticket is 3 points, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Division’s website. Accumulating eight or more points — just three tickets — puts you at risk for having your license suspended.

The people who get in real trouble are the ones who don’t realize they’ve already received multiple tickets, Cummings said. Tickets don’t arrive for a few weeks, so it’s easy to keep reoffending. Suddenly, you have 11 tickets. At 3 points a pop, that can lead to a mandatory license suspension, he said.

“It’s just crazy to think of how quickly things can snowball,” he said. “These are not the egregious cases where someone is doing 90 in a 40 or something like that.”

If you get multiple tickets in the mail, your best option is to wait and see if you are served, and then take it from there.

Will I actually get served?

That remains to be seen.

The city’s contract with Verra Mobility states that the company “is solely responsible for all process service.” The contract also says that “effective process service is a critical aspect of the goal of the Phoenix Police Department to reduce the number of collisions and related injuries within the City of Phoenix.” And with a $20-per-paid-ticket incentive, it’s in Verra Mobility’s best interest to successfully serve you.

The contract says that Verra Mobility, or any firm it hires as a subcontractor for process serving, may serve tickets throughout the entire state. Process servers may not come to your house between 10 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., per the contract, and they must make at least three attempts to serve you. If they haven’t tracked you down — after having “contacted neighbors at the address provided and (having) performed and exhausted all public database searches” — they may “skip trace” by looking you up in a pay database and attempting to serve you at any address they find there.

If a process server shows up at your house, that person can serve someone else on your behalf, but that someone else has to live there and be considered of reasonable age. Your adult cousin visiting from out of town doesn’t count. Your teenage son does. The city’s contract says service must be recorded clearly on video.

Are there ways to make it harder to get served?

Registering your car to a P.O. Box or to a business address adds an extra layer of complication, because it makes it harder for a process server to find you. But that isn’t a sure thing, and Verra Mobility’s contract allows them to petition the court for alternative service, which may not involve finding you in person at all.

However, if you have out-of-state plates, you’re in luck. There’s a next to zero likelihood they’ll hunt you down.

Verra Mobility has to successfully serve the person whose name is listed as owning the vehicle since the ticket is issued to the license plate — but that isn’t always the right driver. This gets complicated with rental cars or when your buddy gets a ticket while borrowing your car. But that doesn’t mean you should start driving around in a monkey mask to get away with speeding.

One surefire way to avoid dealing with any of this is to just slow down. Don’t get the ticket in the first place.