Watch: Would automated traffic enforcement make Mass. roads safer?

Seeing Red: The Get-It-Now Age Of Uber And Amazon Delivers New Traffic To Boston's Doorstep — BROOKLINE, MA - OCTOBER 29: With a Lyft/Uber driver blocking the bike lane waiting for a passenger, a cyclist slows Beacon Street traffic in Brookline, MA as he moves around the obstruction on Oct. 29, 2019. That boxy delivery truck blocking your lane is just one maddening manifestation of a public failure to adapt to the new convenience economy. The technology built around our desire for instant gratification - Uber and Lyft, DoorDash and Grubhub, the Amazon packages whizzing from distribution centers to our doorsteps - has become the source of huge amounts of new traffic. Hundreds of thousands of these trips would never have happened just a few years ago. But the public policy response has been no match for this challenge, the Globe Spotlight Team has found. In Boston, in fact, the operative policy only enables the offender. It is part of a pattern of delayed or passive public response to our slow-moving crisis in commuting. True, state officials were a nose ahead of the pack in imposing a surcharge on Uber and Lyft rides three years ago - an attempt at the time to make the companies pay their share of transportation costs - but now they have fallen out of the vanguard. Confronted by the powerful ride-share lobby on Beacon Hill, state leaders havent summoned the will or nerve to impose the kind of high fees and stringent limits other cities are using to try to curb the traffic. (Photo by Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

April 08, 2022

Updated August 28, 2023

Massachusetts drivers are hitting the road a lot more often than they have since the start of the pandemic. But with the added traffic has come a rise in speeding and car accidents, prompting Somerville legislators to propose safeguards such as automated traffic camera enforcement.

Stacey Beuttell, executive director of WalkBoston, and Mary Maguire, director of public and government affairs for AAA Northeast, joined Talking Politics host Adam Reilly to discuss the changing patterns, what automated enforcement might look like and the potential pitfalls.

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Plus, the Massachusetts Senate is considering a proposal that would allow undocumented immigrants to obtain state driver’s licenses. GBH News Politics Editor Peter Kadzis and Boston Business Journal Digital Editor Steph Solis came on the show to discuss the bill, a push by State House staffers to unionize and the new city tourism ads unveiled this week in Boston.

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Watch: Would automated traffic enforcement make Mass. roads safer?