LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — If you've driven on the streets of Las Vegas, you've seen people running red lights.
Whether it's impairment, impatience or insolence, failing to stop has had real consequences, and sometimes deadly ones.
That's one of the reasons a viewer named Nicole wrote to us to ask why Nevada doesn't use red-light cameras, which snap a picture of scofflaws and send them a ticket in the mail.
It's a common question, one that's been asked many times, by locals and lawmakers alike.
Here's the story:
Back in 1999, automated traffic cameras were banned in Nevada. Legislative committee minutes from that year show then-state Sen. Mark James, R-Clark County, warning about Big Brother.
"He urged the [Senate Transportation] committee to be careful to not set us on a path of compromising the civil liberties of our citizens," the minutes read. "Senator James then stressed the need to recognize possible consequences to our actions if they, as legislators, were to permit law enforcement to infringe on our rights."
James's arguments carried the day, and the law he backed has remained undisturbed for a quarter century.
But not for lack of trying.
Lawmakers have considered bills to create exceptions or repeal the ban on automated traffic cameras no fewer than 11 times in the years since it was put in place.
Each time, the bill has failed to pass both houses of the Legislature, even when circumscribed to apply only to school zones, construction zones or railroad crossings. Restrictions, including requiring an officer to review each photo before a ticket is sent — and limiting the fine to between $50 and $100 — have failed to sway lawmakers in libertarian Nevada.
Until this year, that is.
In the 2025 Legislature, three bills were introduced. One would have allowed the cameras in construction zones, where workers face dangerous conditions, especially on freeways. Another would have allowed cameras in areas where traditional law enforcement methods have failed.
Both those bills were rejected, although the construction-zone bill passed the Assembly and made it to the Senate floor before dying.
Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill, who strongly supported the red-light camera bill in testimony before lawmakers, admitted he fell short in his October speech announcing his bid for re-election.
"And listen, I will fully admit to you that I went up to the Legislature this last session and testified in front of them on red-light cameras, and I literally got laughed out of the building," McMahill said. "I don't deny that. But what I will also tell you is that I'll be back again next time. I'm going to come back with a better plan. And I'm going to continue to ask those other elected officials to have some level of responsibility for the ways people are dying in our community."
But one bill carving out an exception to the ban did pass the Legislature: Assembly Bill 527 will allow cameras to be mounted on school buses, to catch people who speed by when red lights are flashing.
The Clark County School District said Monday that it is in the process of hiring a vendor to install the cameras, and expects to present a proposal to the board of trustees in January.
So while red light cameras won't be used on Las Vegas streets, on freeways, in school zones or at railroad crossings, they will be used on buses starting next year, the first exception to the camera ban in decades.
