The letter arrived in an envelope marked “ATTENTION REQUIRED” and “Traffic Violation Document Enclosed.”

The return address was “District Court of the First Circuit, Tempe AZ,” so of course I thought it was a scam, just like all those phony text messages about unpaid traffic fines from the Arizona Department of Transportation or toll charges from some other random state.

It certainly couldn’t be real. I almost threw it away. But then, I opened it.

It was a warning letter about driving too fast on the Likelike and it was totally me.

Oops.

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There are plenty of examples of people driving crazy, weaving in and out of cars at high speeds like they’re characters in a Vin Diesel movie, doing wheelies on their motorcycles on the freeway, driving drunk and asking for trouble. We like to grumble self-righteously about those who don’t seem to care for their own lives and others, the frenzied speed demons and daredevils who whiz past us so fast we’re sure we’ll hear about their impending crash on the evening news.

But then there are people like me. I drive like an aunty. I have no shame reversing in and out of a parking stall multiple times to get it just right so the cars on either side of mine have sufficient room to open their door in those skinny spaces they have outside Target Ala Moana or Don Quijote. I drive a sensible car that always has a valid safety sticker.

I have no traffic violations and I’m not a drinker. When I sped up to 40 in a zone marked 25 mph to make the red light on Likelike and School Street on a Saturday morning at 7 a.m., I wasn’t weaving home after a bender. I was driving my kid to a National History Day competition at Windward Community College. No thrills were being sought. I wasn’t impaired or distracted. My phone was safely in the bottom of my purse. I wasn’t even late.

No excuses. Just going too fast.

And that is why this program is needed. The world isn’t neatly divided up into “safe drivers” and “unsafe drivers.” The categories are more like, “perpetual knuckleheads” and “needs reminders.”

The letter included a link where I could enter a password to view video and photos of myself violating the law.

Yeah, no thanks. I know what I did.

The Hawaiʻi Speed Safety Program began an introductory phase from March 1 to April 29. This phase was later extended to October. In the first few weeks, the program was mailing citations out at a rate of 30,000 a week. (The cameras are located in the downtown Honolulu area and the full list can be found here.)

Twenty-five years ago, the idea of cameras catching drivers in the act of speeding was absolutely untenable to Hawaii residents. It was on the front page of the newspaper every day and hundreds of letters to the editor expressed opposition. There was so much emotional opposition to “big brother” cameras spying on drivers and being cited without the face-to-face interaction of being stopped by flashing blue lights and an actual uniformed police officer that the “van cam” program was nixed after it was approved by the Legislature and implemented by a contractor, who then got a multimillion-dollar payout when the state pulled the plug on the program.

This time, the traffic cams came with a new brand — Speed Safety Program — and became operational without much protest or fanfare. Why the difference? There are more people living on Oahu now, more cars, more traffic deaths (30 in 2001, already 44 halfway through 2025). 

But mostly, the expectation of privacy changed. Everybody got used to the idea of cameras frickin everywhere, not to mention strangers with cellphones shooting and posting video of us out in public getting mad in Safeway or slurping noodles in the food court. Weʻve also binge watched a lot of British crime shows that use CCTV footage to move the plot forward. And possibly, the crazy driving has only gotten crazier, and weʻre sick of that. So weʻve heard nary a peep of protest.

But hey, take it from me, a heavy foot early on a Saturday morning blasting up the Likelike at an eye-popping 40 miles an hour: Donʻt do it.

I got busted during the “introductory” phase of the program, where all I got was the warning letter (from the contractor in Arizona.) When the program is fully in effect, that speeding citation would have come with a $250 fine.

But c’mon, we know its more than that. Especially on an island with a million people and cars, it’s our civil duty, aunty drivers and all.