---
title: "New Orleans Speed Camera Has Been Issuing Speeding Tickets to Parked Cars For Years"
description: "If the prospect of a stopped car receiving an official speeding ticket from the New Orleans Police Department has you scratching your head, consider the Kafkaesque situation that local man Donald Schultz finds himself in."
date: "2018-04-09"
modified: "2018-04-10"
authors:
  - name: "Kyle Cheromcha"
    job_title: "Editor-in-Chief"
    link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/kyle-cheromcha.md"
url: "https://www.thedrive.com/news/20011/new-orleans-speed-camera-keeps-issuing-speeding-tickets-to-parked-cars"
categories:
  - "Car Tech"
  - "News"
tags:
  - "Louisiana"
  - "New Orleans"
  - "police"
  - "speed cameras"
  - "speeding"
---

# New Orleans Speed Camera Has Been Issuing Speeding Tickets to Parked Cars For Years

![](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/images-by-url-td/content/2018/04/speed-camera-1.jpg>)
*\<em\>www.thedrive.com</em>*

Automated speed cameras [certainly have their detractors](<https://www.thedrive.com/news/17785/thieves-steal-80000-speed-camera-system-in-broad-daylight.md>), but residents of one neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana have raised the most logical reason yet to get rid of—or at least recalibrate—the robot menace: a unit positioned on a busy street keeps issuing speeding tickets to parked cars, and authorities won't do anything to stop it, [according to *WWL-TV.*](<https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/orleans/traffic-camera-issuing-speeding-tickets-to-parked-car/535670008>)

If the prospect of a stopped car receiving an official speeding ticket from the New Orleans Police Department has you scratching your head, consider the Kafkaesque situation that local man Donald Schultz finds himself in. Schultz parks his car and truck on the street in front of his house in view of the speed camera, and the unit continually registers them as the target vehicles when someone speeds by. So Schultz gets the ticket while the real offenders go unpunished; Schultz estimates his parked cars have earned at least 10 citations since the camera went up in 2011.

![message-editor%2F1523314749594-speedcamera2.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/message-editor/1523314749594-speedcamera2.jpg>)
**YouTube | WWL-TV**

According to the station's original report, he's not alone in getting [speeding tickets](<https://www.thedrive.com/news/17282/181-in-a-75-here-are-the-20-fastest-speeding-tickets-in-texas-in-2017.md>) while traveling at 0 mph. A calibration error is partly to blame, but the real problem here is that New Orleans police are supposed to review each and every ticket generated by the automated cameras. That means for almost a decade, tickets have either been rubber-stamped without review—a concept that is [the subject of several current court cases](<https://www.thedrive.com/news/14601/woman-takes-75-speeding-ticket-all-the-way-to-iowa-supreme-court.md>) itself—or the process has enough room for error that Schultz has slipped through the cracks ten times.

Actually, make that 11. After the first story ran last week, Schultz received another ticket on Saturday night. A security camera shows this one was actually triggered by a New Orleans Police Department vehicle speeding down the road, but as usual, Schultz was the unlucky recipient of the fine.

https://youtube.com/embed/KY38N4vnhzI

Schultz says the city previously adjusted the camera's angle and focal point when he complained in the past, but the tickets have continued to pile up. For each citation, he has to waste a day at City Hall explaining his situation to a judge. Vandalism is never a great idea, but if there was ever a time [to destroy a speed camera](<https://www.thedrive.com/watch-this/18798/video-shows-someone-vandalizing-speed-cameras-in-washington-d-c.md>) and get off with a slap on the wrist, this would probably be it.

For their part, city officials told *WWL-TV* that every one of the questionable tickets have been dropped, and the contracted technicians who monitor the cameras and pass along tickets to police would be retrained. A happy ending? Not according to Schultz, who remains wary.

"I have no faith in the system, to be perfectly honest with you," he said to *WWL-TV.*

## Author
Overseeing an expert staff of writers and editors from his lair in Los Angeles, Kyle shapes The Drive’s singular approach to covering the automotive industry and car culture. He’s been with the site as a writer since 2017, taking over as editor in 2019. On a daily basis, Kyle is responsible for directing The Drive's editorial news and car review content strategies, setting special coverage priorities, managing complex reporting projects, and ensuring what you read on the page meets our high internal standards for quality and trustworthiness. He is also the executive producer of The Drive's YouTube channel, which was relaunched in February 2024 to great acclaim and has accumulated over 14M new views in its first year back on the scene. He hosts a biweekly series on the channel where he breaks down fascinating and complicated stories from the automotive world.

### Author social links  
[Bluesky](<https://bsky.app/profile/kylecheromcha.bsky.social>)  
[Instagram](<https://www.instagram.com/kylecheromcha>)  
[LinkedIn](<https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-cheromcha-1550248a/>)