The pilot program allowing the use of speed cameras in active work zones in the Philadelphia area, in effect since its approval under Act 86 of 2018, will be expiring this year unless the Pennsylvania General Assembly makes the program permanent.

A Capitolwire article published this month reported that state Rep. Ed Neilson, D-Philadelphia, is planning legislation that not only would continue the Philadelphia-area program, but expand it.

The problem is that the proposed expansion is too limited. What Neilson, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, wants to do should be authorized for major highways statewide, realizing, of course, that it might take a year or so before the statewide expansion would be fully operational.

Meanwhile, the Legislature should finally do what it should have done a long time ago: ban drivers’ use of hand-held cellphones while their vehicles are in operation.

Neighboring Maryland has that restriction in place. Pennsylvania should imitate that prohibition.

Every motorist who enters Maryland via Route 220 in Bedford County, for example, is greeted with a sign indicating that hand-held cellphones are prohibited. There should be a similar sign on Pennsylvania’s side of the Mason-Dixon Line indicating that drivers’ use of hand-held cellphones is prohibited in this state as well.

Statistics from the speed-cameras pilot program that has been operational in Philadelphia area active work zones as well as on Philadelphia’s Roosevelt Boulevard for the past five years showed through 2022, the state’s traffic speed cameras issued more than 1 million tickets, including almost 445,000 in 2022 alone. Pennsylvania’s southern neighbor, Maryland, in addition to prohibiting held-held cellphones, has had a speed-camera program in effect for years.

If that statewide stop-arm proposal gains legislative approval and the governor’s signature, the Legislature should provide monetary grants to school districts to purchase cameras for all of their buses. It would seem reasonable for the commonwealth, in order to initially obtain such cameras at a lower overall cost, to advertise for bids for the purchase of the cameras in bulk.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, the speed cameras have been effective both in motorists driving at lower speeds and in reducing the number of crashes in work zones.

Hopefully, area legislators will be active in speed camera and stop-arm discussions, going forward, as well as on the hand-held cellphones prohibition front.

Many lives could be saved.