Transportation safety personnel are eyeing new technology to catch vehicles running stop signs in Arlington, but they aren’t yet ready to implement it.
“Right now, we just don’t have the resources,” Christine Baker, manager of the county government’s Vision Zero initiative, said on Wednesday.
Baker spoke on the topic at an annual meeting of stakeholders connected to Vision Zero, which aims to eliminate deaths and serious injuries on county roadways by 2030. She said that in the future, the team will likely consider an AI tool now legal in Virginia to monitor stop-sign compliance.
“It’s not off the table. It’s just really challenging right now to juggle all these [programs].”
Earlier this year, the General Assembly gave localities permission to monitor intersections for stop-sign compliance, limiting the use to school zones, work zones and corridors designated as high-risk. The patron was Sen. Angelia Williams Graves (D-Norfolk).
Monitoring equipment is available through Obvio, which has been reaching out to localities to promote its technology. For Arlington, however, moving in that direction is something to be considered down the road.
“It’s very costly to implement and it requires a lot of staff,” Baker said.
Like other traffic-control initiatives, the county government would be interested in hearing from the public, said Jane Selander, a data analyst for the Vision Zero effort.
“We do heavily rely on community feedback,” she said.
Monitoring equipment is able to identify those ignoring stop signs altogether or doing what is colloquially called a “California roll” — slowing but not completely stopping.
As with devices monitoring speed and red-light compliance in Virginia, citations issued through the stop-sign program would need to be reviewed by either active or retired law enforcement personnel before being sent out.
Offenders would receive a civil fine of up to $100.
The cameras have been in use since 2024 in some Maryland localities. The first to install them was Cottage City, a community of about 1,300 residents in Prince George’s County.
“We had nonstop cut-through traffic skipping our stop signs. Obvio helped us get control of the situation,” said the city’s police chief, Anthony Ayers.
