The cameras moved to the middle of town. As of yesterday, Wednesday, Oct. 21, the City of Falls Church has red-light enforcement cameras watching Washington Street (Route 29) at Broad Street (Route 7), the city’s central crossroads, along with East Broad Street at South Roosevelt Street. Run the red at either one and the camera sees it. For the next four weeks you get a warning. After that, you get a bill. Warnings are through Nov. 19, then $50 fines begin.
The relocated cameras came down from West Broad Street at Cherry Street, and West Broad Street at Annandale Road, the two intersections that have carried the city’s red-light program for nearly 16 years. City officials say all that time under the lens changed how people drive there. Now the enforcement follows the traffic, which keeps piling into Falls Church from regional growth along the I-66 corridor and pours through the city’s two main arteries every day.
“Running a red light is one of the most dangerous choices a driver can make because occupants have little protection in side impact (T-bone) crashes,” Police Chief Shahram Fard said in announcing the change. “Red-light cameras give us a consistent, around-the-clock way to discourage it. Moving them to riskier intersections supports the City’s Vision Zero goal and reflects what our residents and City Council have asked for: safer streets for everyone.”
The warning period began yesterday and runs through Thursday, Nov. 19. Any driver photographed entering either intersection after the light turns red during that window will get a warning notice in the mail. On Friday, Nov. 20, the warnings stop and confirmed violations carry a $50 civil fine.
The cameras run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No officer has to be standing on the corner. No patrol car has to be sitting in a lot. The system watches through the evening rush, when red-light running is most common, and through the middle of the night, when no officer is around to see it.
A machine does not write the ticket, though. The City’s private vendor first screens the photos and video the cameras capture. A sworn Falls Church police officer then reviews that evidence and decides whether a violation actually happened. Only violations confirmed by that officer turn into citations, which are mailed to the vehicle’s registered owner, lessee or renter.
Virginia sets the rules here, and it keeps the penalty tight. State law caps any red-light camera penalty at $50 and bars localities from tacking on court costs. A camera ticket also stays off your driving record and cannot be used against you on insurance, which makes it a very different animal from a ticket written by an officer. Get pulled over and convicted of running a red light in Virginia and the fine can climb as high as $350, with demerit points attached.
The authority comes from Virginia Code § 15.2-968.1, which the General Assembly approved in 2007 to let localities statewide use red-light cameras after an earlier pilot program expired in 2005. The City said the two new intersections were chosen using criteria under that law, including crash history, how often drivers run the light and how many pedestrians and cyclists use the crossing.
Red-light running kills people. In 2024, 1,119 people died nationwide in crashes involving red-light running, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and more than 141,000 were injured. Half of those killed were not the drivers who ran the light. They were pedestrians, bicyclists and people in other vehicles who were simply in the way.
Drivers know it’s dangerous and do it anyway. In a 2024 AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety survey, 80% of drivers said blowing through a light that just turned red is very or extremely dangerous. Twenty-seven percent admitted doing it in the past 30 days.
That gap between what drivers know and what they do is the whole argument for cameras. The best-known research comes from IIHS. Studying large U.S. cities, IIHS found fatal red-light-running crash rates ran 21% lower after cameras were switched on than expected without them, and fatal crashes of all types at signalized intersections ran 14% lower. The flip side hits just as hard. In 14 cities that shut their camera programs down between 2010 and 2014, fatal red-light-running crash rates came in 30% higher than they would have been had the cameras stayed on. In Houston, which pulled its cameras in 2011, right-angle red-light-running crashes jumped 23% at the intersections that used to have them.
Falls Church is far from alone. As of September 2026, IIHS counts 357 communities nationwide running red-light camera programs, Falls Church among them.
This is not the city’s first round with cameras, and the history cuts both ways. Falls Church was one of several Virginia localities that ran red-light cameras under a state pilot program that expired in 2005. A 2007 Virginia Transportation Research Council study of that era found the cameras reduced red-light-running crashes but increased rear-end crashes, with results varying widely from one jurisdiction and intersection to the next. IIHS acknowledges the same tradeoff, noting that some studies show cameras cut side-impact and overall injury crashes while increasing rear-end collisions.
The current program came online in December 2010, when cameras went live at Broad and Cherry and at West Broad and Annandale, with a 30-day warning period before $50 fines began in January 2011. Drivers did not slow down right away. Police issued more than 500 warnings before the fines kicked in, and the cameras then caught 309 violators in their first five weeks of fines, roughly eight drivers a day. Then-Vice Mayor Dave Snyder told WTOP the city would put cameras at far more intersections if the approval process weren’t so slow, calling red-light and stop-sign running an epidemic in Northern Virginia.
None of that is an argument against the cameras. The research is clear that they save lives, and the City is right to aim them where the traffic and the danger are heaviest. But a program that asks residents to trust a camera, a vendor and a $50 bill in the mail should show its work. The City’s announcement did not include crash totals or violation counts for Washington and Broad or East Broad and Roosevelt, the two intersections now under the cameras. It did not include annual citation figures or collision data for Cherry Street and Annandale Road, either, even as it credited the cameras with changing driver behavior there.
That distinction matters, and the safety groups that champion these cameras say so themselves. A 2021 automated enforcement checklist from IIHS, AAA, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the Governors Highway Safety Association and the National Safety Council tells communities to plan for regular evaluation of their camera programs using crash and violation data. IIHS says programs earn public support when they are built to change driver behavior, not to raise revenue. Falls Church can make that case better than anyone. If the cameras worked at Cherry and Annandale, the numbers will show it. If Washington and Broad is now the most dangerous intersection in the city, the numbers will show that too. Putting them on the table before the first $50 tickets go out on Nov. 20 would only strengthen the program. The News-Press has requested those figures from the City and will report them when they are provided.
The move is one piece of Falls Church’s Vision Zero effort, the City’s goal of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries. That effort puts the focus on pedestrians and cyclists, who have nothing between them and a two-ton vehicle when something goes wrong. The red-light cameras are also one part of the Police Department’s broader photo enforcement effort, which includes school zone speed cameras and school bus cameras.
For drivers, the message is simple. Cherry Street and Annandale Road are off the list. Washington and Broad and East Broad and Roosevelt are on it. You have until Nov. 19 to get used to it, and starting Nov. 20, the warning turns into a $50 fine. The light turns red. The camera is watching. Stop.
