Groton, Connecticut Cameras Issued 24,000 Tickets, $50 for a First Offense

• Groton, Connecticut has issued 24,000 camera tickets in the few weeks after its speed cameras went live, with a $50 fine for a first offense.
• A ticket follows when a driver goes more than 10 mph over the limit and a police officer confirms the footage, and police plan to release more data on Nov. 15.
• Cameras watch Route 349 (Clarence B. Sharp Highway), Mitchell Street and Thames Street, the commuter roads that serve Electric Boat, Pfizer and UConn Avery Point.

The Roads Where Groton Drivers Went Fastest, and What the Cameras Do About It

Drivers in Groton, Connecticut have 24,000 reasons to watch the speedometer. That is the number of tickets police have sent out in the few weeks the city’s speed cameras have been running, across three spots on the commuter roads into the city. A first offense costs $50. If all 24,000 were first offenses, the face value would be $1.2 million, but the sources do not say how many were first offenses, how many have been paid or what the city has collected.

Cameras and speed signs have clocked some drivers at close to triple the posted limit. Police use a ten mile per hour buffer, so a driver has to pass the posted limit by more than 10 mph before the system flags the car. On a 25 mph road that line sits at 35 mph, on a 30 mph road at 40 mph, and on the 45 mph stretch of Route 349 at 55 mph. A police officer reviews each flagged hit before a ticket goes out in the mail.

Nicole Bigelow found out how that works. She will pay the $50 fine as a first-time offender, and she says she will not do it again.

“Just once and I am never, ever doing it again,” she said.

How the Groton Rollout Worked: Warnings First, Then Tickets

The city switched the cameras on at three locations on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. One sits on Thames Street, one on Mitchell Street and one on the Route 349 corridor, Clarence B. Sharp Highway. For the first stretch the cameras mailed warnings instead of fines to drivers going more than 10 mph over the limit, and officials said ticketing would start in 30 days. Police now say Nov. 15 will mark one month from the day the cameras went live, and that they plan to release more data on what the cameras captured. The two dates do not line up, so the day the first fine went out is not on record.

The cameras are not the only devices. Groton also uses digital speed signs, which can be relocated after residents complain. Unlike the cameras, the signs do not capture license plates. One of them, on Shennecossett Road in October, caught a driver at 72 mph in a 25 mph zone. Residents see the speeding too.

“It’s more than that sometimes, they fly down this road,” said Dale Weaver, a resident.

The city council approved four devices in total. The plan Groton filed with the Connecticut Department of Transportation names three sites for the initial deployment, and the sources do not say where the fourth device will go. The city chose the three sites using traffic volume, speeding patterns and a city traffic study.

Connecticut sets the ground rules for every municipal camera program. After a 30-day written-warning period, the state caps the fine at $50 for a first offense and $75 for a second or later one, and an electronic payment can carry a processing fee of up to $15. A police officer or a local traffic authority designee must review the images before a citation is mailed, and a citation is invalid if it is mailed more than 60 days after the alleged violation. The ticket goes to the registered owner of the car, who is liable whoever was driving. The state says it carries no license points, does not appear on driving records and is not reported to insurers. Groton’s own second-offense fine is not in the reporting.

Three Sites, Three Speed Limits, and What Drivers Were Doing Before the Cameras

Groton filed its Automated Traffic Enforcement Safety Device Municipal Plan with the Office of the State Traffic Administration at the Connecticut DOT on July 22, 2026. Captain Patricia Lieteau of the Groton police prepared the submission. The plan carries the speed studies that picked the sites, and the numbers show where the 10 mph buffer bites hardest. Its vehicle counts are projected monthly totals built from three-day studies.

Thames Street, northbound, has a 25 mph limit. The 85th percentile speed, the speed that 85 percent of drivers stay at or under, is 33 mph. The street carries an annual average of 4,800 vehicles a day, and the fastest vehicle in the June 17 to 19 study hit 61 mph. In the projected monthly count of 78,210 vehicles, 6,860 traveled above 35 mph, about 8.8 percent. The plan says that on an average day hundreds of vehicles go more than 10 mph over the limit.

Mitchell Street, northbound, has a 30 mph limit and an 85th percentile speed of 39 mph. It carries an annual average of 13,300 vehicles a day, heavy with traffic leaving Electric Boat, Pfizer and UConn Avery Point. The top speed in the same June study was 56 mph. Of 200,230 projected monthly vehicles, 21,620 ran above 40 mph, or 10.8 percent.

Clarence B. Sharp Highway, Route 349, is the busiest and the fastest. The limit is 45 mph, the 85th percentile speed is 56 mph northbound and 55 mph southbound, and the road carries an annual average of 16,600 vehicles a day. The June 8 to 10 study clocked a top speed of 76 mph. Northbound, 54,390 of 290,120 projected monthly vehicles went above 55 mph, 18.7 percent. Southbound, 47,270 of 301,370 did, 15.7 percent. At that site a camera aimed both ways has the most to catch.

Put side by side, the plan shows roughly one driver in 11 above the trigger speed on Thames Street, one in 9 on Mitchell Street and between one in 5 and one in 6 on Route 349 before enforcement began. Those are projections from a few days of counting, not ticket totals, and they do not say how many of those drivers a camera would flag or an officer would confirm. Other states set their own schedules: Annapolis cameras run around the clock under a Maryland graduated schedule that tops out at $425.

Why Groton Police Say a Patrol Car Cannot Do This Job

The plan gives a reason for each site, and the reasons are alike: traditional enforcement is unsafe or cannot be kept up. Connecticut is rolling the same tool out statewide, with school zone speed cameras arriving across the state.

Thames Street is narrow and curved, with on-street parking that forces many drivers over the double yellow centerline. The plan says there is no safe place along it for police to pull a driver over or park a patrol car without blocking the lane. Three marked crosswalks sit near the camera, one about 150 feet south and two about 400 feet north, serving the waterfront, parks and neighborhoods. Crash data shows five crashes on the street from 2023 to 2025, all with property damage only, and the plan argues that records miss the near misses and centerline crossings city staff see every day. Police logged 202 speed-related stops on Thames Street in those three years, 97 in 2023, 93 in 2024 and 12 in 2025.

On Mitchell Street, the road bends right and climbs a hill with a school bus stop at the crest and a marked crosswalk about 300 feet south. Drivers speed up on the downhill run toward a signal. The department says it often enforces there but lacks the resources to keep it up. The plan lists five crashes from 2023 to 2025, two of them with injuries, and 415 speed-related stops.

Route 349 is the city’s main industrial route and a path for school buses heading to the local elementary school. Police regularly enforce there, but the plan says staffing limits stop the city from doing it consistently. Six crashes fall in the plan’s window, two with injuries, and police made 441 speed-related stops on the road in three years, including 181 in 2025, the highest annual count of the three sites.

Across the three roads, officers made 1,058 speed-related stops between 2023 and 2025, against 5,526 traffic stops of all kinds listed in the plan. The commuter load behind that is large: Electric Boat employs about 15,000 people at its Groton yard and is hiring about 2,200 more, Pfizer adds about 4,000 daily commuters, and UConn Avery Point about 740 daily trips. The city also looked at road diets, which cut lanes to slow traffic, and ruled them out, as shift-change backups would worsen. A signal timing review for Mitchell Street and Route 349 found no need at the time.

What Residents Say, and What You Can Do If You Drive These Roads

Reaction runs both ways. Pam Michaud lives near the Thames Street device and says it has made a difference.

“When I am walking on Thames Street I can always tell which cars know there are speed cameras and which ones don’t because those who don’t go speeding by,” she said.

Bigelow believes the cushion should be larger.

“People are on their way to work and that’s why I say 5 more mph,” she added.

The reporting so far mentions no plan to widen the buffer. If you drive these roads, the practical steps are short. Know the three locations: Thames Street north of Baker Avenue northbound, Mitchell Street south of Meridian Street northbound, and Route 349 south of Meridian Street in both directions. Treat the posted limit as the limit. The 10 mph cushion is an enforcement threshold, and a speed above it can bring a mailed ticket after an officer reviews the footage. The ticket goes to the registered owner, so if you lend your car to a commuter, the notice still lands with you. If a notice arrives, follow the instructions printed on it for paying or contesting, and check its mailing date against the 60-day limit. The sources do not set out the steps to contest a ticket.

Police say they will release more data on what the cameras captured around Nov. 15, so watch for that update. For comparison, West Philadelphia’s Route 13 cameras carry $100 to $150 tickets.

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Sources

• WFSB: Tens of thousands of tickets sent out to offenders in Groton after speed camera activation
• WFSB: Speed cameras now active at three Groton locations
• Connecticut DOT: Automated Traffic Enforcement Safety Device FAQs
• Connecticut DOT: City of Groton Automated Traffic Enforcement Safety Device Municipal Plan

Reviewed by Preetam Gadekar