The car accident lawyers in Georgia and Florida, will agree that a camera on a pole beside the road is not supposed to be the thing that kills you. Yet how roadside camera poles are installed — how close to the travel lane, on what kind of base, tested to what standard — became a live national safety story in the summer of 2026, and it raises a legal question that has nothing to do with what the cameras record.
The question is older than the technology: when someone puts a fixed object beside a road, do they owe a duty to put it there safely? In Florida and Georgia, the answer is yes. This page covers the engineering standards that govern objects placed near traffic, the negligence theories that apply when those standards are ignored, and the evidence that disappears in the days after a crash.
This is a discussion of roadway safety engineering and injury law — not of what these cameras record, who can search the data, or whether they should exist. Those are important debates, and they are somebody else’s page.
The “clear zone” is the whole idea
Highway engineers do not assume every vehicle stays in its lane. They assume the opposite. A share of vehicles will always leave the travel way — a blown tire, a medical event, a swerve to avoid a child. Roadside design exists to make that moment survivable.
The area beside the travel lane that is supposed to be kept clear and recoverable is called the clear zone. Its width depends on speed, volume, and roadside slope. The governing engineering reference in the United States is the AASHTO Roadside Design Guide.
Within that zone, a fixed object is supposed to be handled one of three ways:
- Removed — relocated outside the clear zone.
- Shielded — protected by a guardrail, barrier, or crash cushion so a vehicle never reaches it.
- Made breakaway — mounted on a base engineered to yield, shear, or slip on impact so the pole gives way instead of stopping the vehicle.
That third option is why an ordinary highway sign post does not behave like a bridge pier when a car hits it. Roadside safety hardware used on federal-aid highways is evaluated against crash-test criteria — historically NCHRP Report 350, and under the current AASHTO Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH).
The physics are unforgiving. A rigid, non-yielding post inside the clear zone converts a run-off-road event a driver would likely have walked away from into a sudden stop measured in inches. That is the difference between a damaged fender and a catastrophic or fatal injury, and it is the entire reason the breakaway concept exists.
What the reporting actually says right now
The current attention traces to a safety advocate, not a court ruling. Here is what has been reported, attributed to the outlets that reported it.
On July 21, 2026, WDBJ7 reported that Steve Eimers — a road safety advocate known as “The Guardrail Guy” — has raised concerns that automated license plate reader cameras and related roadside devices are being mounted on posts that lack breakaway features, and that he has not found evidence of independent third-party crash testing for some installations. Per that reporting, his concerns are not limited to a single vendor; he named several companies that install roadside devices. WDBJ7 reported that his advocacy follows the death of his 17-year-old daughter, Hannah, in a guardrail crash.
WDBJ7 also reported Flock Safety’s response, which matters as much as the criticism. According to that reporting, the company said it uses standard poles for many deployments and advanced breakaway poles meeting MASH standards on DOT-managed roads and higher-speed corridors where required, with those breakaway poles independently tested through the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. Its position, as reported, is that breakaway poles are not required on lower-speed roadways.
On July 24, 2026, WKRN News 2 in Nashville reported (syndicated by Yahoo and AOL) that Flock Safety replaced 16 camera poles in Tennessee, and that CEO Garrett Langley said on X the company was expanding its pole review nationwide. That report quoted Eimers on the state of installation oversight: “this is really the wild west.” It also said the Tennessee Department of Transportation was gathering information on whether permits are required for such installations in state rights-of-way and on crashworthiness standards for the poles.
Earlier, on June 10, 2026, 9News in Colorado reported a similar dispute over an installation in Golden, Colorado, where Eimers argued a camera had no breakaway plate and sat on the traffic side of a guardrail. He framed the standard this way: it “must be crashworthy or it must get out of the clear zone.” The company responded, per that reporting, that the installation used a standard pole on a lower-speed roadway where an advanced breakaway pole was not needed.
Two points of honesty are required here. First, no court has found that any of these companies was negligent or that any installation caused any specific injury. What exists today is a safety advocate’s documentation, a company’s stated position that its installations meet applicable requirements, voluntary pole replacements, and a state DOT asking questions. That is a live safety inquiry, not a liability finding.
Second, this is not a distant story for our markets. Flock Safety is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, per an April 2025 announcement from the Georgia Governor’s office about a new manufacturing facility in Smyrna. And on July 24, 2026, News4Jax reported deployment of these cameras across communities in Northeast Florida. Both markets this firm serves have roadside camera hardware in the ground.
How a pole becomes a legal claim
Strip away the brand names and the news cycle, and roadside hardware cases tend to fall into four recognizable patterns.
1. The struck-object case. A vehicle leaves the travel lane and strikes a rigid pole inside the clear zone. The legal question is not primarily why the vehicle left the road — roadside design already assumes that will happen. It is whether the object should have been there at all, and if it had to be, whether it should have been shielded or built to break away.
2. The sight-obstruction case. A pole, cabinet, or equipment box blocks the sight triangle at an intersection or driveway. The injured person may never touch the pole; two other drivers collide because one could not see the other. The hardware is still a proximate cause.
3. The failing-hardware case. A pole, mount, or camera assembly comes down — inadequate foundation, corroded or under-specified mount, a bracket that fails in wind — onto a vehicle, pedestrian, or worker. This is closer to ordinary premises and product liability analysis than to roadway design.
4. The installation-worker case. A technician is injured during installation or servicing. That is generally a workers’ compensation matter against the employer, but it can also support a separate third-party claim against another company whose conduct contributed.
Who can actually be responsible
The decision to put a pole in a particular spot is usually made by more than one party. Sorting out who did what is early investigative work, not something a claimant is expected to know. The candidates typically include:
- The equipment vendor — for the pole and mounting system design, and for what it specified or approved.
- The installation contractor — for how the work was performed: depth, foundation, base hardware, offset from the travel lane.
- The pole or foundation manufacturer — for a defect in the component itself.
- The entity that chose the location — often a municipality, county, or law enforcement agency, sometimes a private property owner, retailer, or HOA.
- Any engineer or agency that reviewed, permitted, or approved the siting.
Whether any of these parties bears responsibility depends entirely on facts developed through records and expert review. No one should assume a defendant from a news headline.
Leaving the road does not automatically end your claim
In a single-vehicle run-off-road crash, the defense’s first move is almost always to place fault on the driver: you left the lane, so this is on you. Florida law does not work that way automatically.
Florida applies modified comparative negligence under Fla. Stat. § 768.81. A party “found to be greater than 50 percent at fault for his or her own harm may not recover any damages.” At or below that threshold, damages are reduced in proportion to the claimant’s share of fault rather than eliminated. So a driver who bears real responsibility for leaving the roadway may still have a viable claim against whoever is responsible for what was waiting beside it — reduced, but not erased.
The clear zone is itself the strongest answer to the “you left the lane” defense. Engineers designed it because they knew vehicles would leave the lane. A defense theory treating that as the end of the analysis argues against the premise of the standard it is measured by.
Two coverage points follow, because a run-off-road crash is still a motor vehicle crash:
- PIP comes first. Florida’s no-fault framework under Fla. Stat. § 627.736 makes personal injury protection the first payer for initial medical bills regardless of fault, and the deadline for seeking initial treatment is strict.
- The permanency threshold governs pain and suffering. Under Fla. Stat. § 627.737(2), damages for pain, suffering, mental anguish and inconvenience require an injury consisting in whole or in part of significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function; permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability, other than scarring or disfigurement; significant and permanent scarring or disfigurement; or death.
- Uninsured motorist coverage may be the only other policy in the case. In a single-vehicle collision with a fixed object, there is frequently no other driver and no other liability policy. That makes UM/UIM coverage under Fla. Stat. § 627.727 and the claim against the responsible hardware party the entire financial picture — a common and painful surprise for families.
When a government entity is in the mix
Roadside camera installations are frequently requested, sited, or permitted by a city, county, or state agency. That changes the procedure substantially, and the deadlines are shorter than most people expect.
Florida’s limited waiver of sovereign immunity appears at Fla. Stat. § 768.28. Two features matter most:
Written presentment. Under § 768.28(6)(a), an action may not be instituted against the state or one of its agencies or subdivisions unless the claimant first presents the claim in writing to the appropriate agency — and, except as to a claim against a municipality, county, or the Florida Space Authority, also to the Department of Financial Services — within three years after the claim accrues. The agency generally has six months to make a final disposition, and failure to respond operates as a final denial. This step must happen before suit, not during it.
Limits on liability. Section 768.28(5) caps the amount recoverable from a governmental entity. The dollar figures are set by statute and have been amended over time; anyone relying on a particular number should confirm it against the current statutory text rather than a secondary source.
Then there is the distinction that often decides these cases: planning-level versus operational-level conduct. Florida law generally treats discretionary, planning-level governmental decisions — the policy judgment about whether and where to deploy a program — as immune from suit. Operational-level conduct, meaning the implementation of a decision already made, is generally not immune.
Applied here, the difference can be everything. A decision to adopt a camera program at all looks like planning. A specific installation performed at the wrong offset, on the wrong base, without the permit or engineering review the agency’s own procedures require, looks far more like operational conduct. Which side of that line the facts fall on is often the central fight in a roadside hardware case.
The evidence disappears fast — this is the urgent part
If there is one practical thing to take from this page, it is this: the proof in a roadside hardware case is fragile, and much of it is controlled by the parties who would be defending the claim.
A damaged pole is often replaced within days, treated as routine maintenance rather than evidence. Once the original pole, base, and foundation hardware are gone, the most important physical exhibit in the case — the thing that would show whether a breakaway base existed and whether it functioned — is gone with it.
Records that matter typically include:
- As-built drawings and the site plan.
- The permit application and any permit issued, or evidence that none was.
- The siting approval and any engineering review.
- The installation contract and scope of work.
- Foundation specifications and the pole’s crash-test certification, if any.
- Inspection and maintenance records for the installation.
- The physical pole, base, and mounting hardware themselves.
Because that last item goes away so quickly, a written preservation letter — a spoliation notice directing the relevant parties to preserve the hardware and associated records — is an early and urgent step, not a later one. Scene photographs showing the pole’s position relative to the edge of pavement and any guardrail are also worth preserving immediately.
How Georgia differs
Georgia is a separate framework, and the differences are not cosmetic. For a crash on the Georgia side, these apply instead of the Florida rules above:
- Limitations period. Under O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33, actions for injuries to the person must generally be brought within two years after the right of action accrues.
- Comparative negligence — note the difference. Under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33(g), a plaintiff “shall not be entitled to receive any damages if the plaintiff is 50 percent or more responsible for the injury or damages claimed.” Georgia bars recovery at 50 percent; Florida only above it. A claimant assessed exactly 50 percent would be barred in Georgia but not Florida — a meaningful distinction where fault allocation is contested.
- Ante litem notice. Claims against a Georgia municipal corporation generally require written notice within six months of the event under O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5. Claims against the State under the Georgia Tort Claims Act generally require written notice within 12 months of the date the loss was discovered or should have been discovered, under O.C.G.A. § 50-21-26. These deadlines are short, and missing one can end an otherwise viable claim.
If a crash involves a pole in metro Atlanta, the Georgia wrongful death and injury framework and these notice periods apply. For crashes in South Florida, the Florida rules discussed above control — see our Miami car accident practice for the broader motor vehicle claims process.
Talk to a lawyer before the pole is gone
If you or a family member was injured in a crash involving a roadside pole, camera mount, or similar fixed equipment, the first priority is medical care — call 911 if anyone is hurt, and get evaluated promptly, both for your health and because Florida’s PIP framework has strict timing for initial treatment.
The filing deadline. Florida negligence claims are governed by Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(a), a two-year limitations period. That two-year period applies to claims accruing on or after the effective date of Florida’s 2023 tort reform legislation; claims accruing earlier are generally governed by the prior four-year period. Where a government entity is involved, the separate presentment requirements above apply as well.
So the clock runs on two things at once: those legal deadlines, and the physical evidence at the roadside. The second usually moves faster.
The Perazzo Law Firm handles personal injury and wrongful death cases in Florida and Georgia. We offer a free case evaluation and work on a contingency fee basis, meaning there is no attorney’s fee unless a recovery is obtained. Case costs and expenses are a separate category from attorney’s fees; how they are handled is explained in the written fee agreement before you sign it.
You can reach us at 16666 NE 19th Ave #110, North Miami Beach, FL 33162, or through our contact page for a FREE Consultation. If you still have photographs from the scene, or know the location of the pole involved, bring that with you — it may matter more than you expect.
Sources referenced on this page
Reporting: WDBJ7 (July 21, 2026); WKRN News 2 Nashville (July 24, 2026); 9News Colorado (June 10, 2026); News4Jax (July 24, 2026); Office of the Governor of Georgia (April 2, 2025). Engineering: AASHTO Roadside Design Guide; AASHTO Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH).
Disclaimer. This page is general information about Florida and Georgia law, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with The Perazzo Law Firm personal injury accident attorneys in Atlanta and Miami; no such relationship exists until we agree in writing to represent you. Statutes and court decisions are amended over time, and every case turns on its own facts. Nothing here is a prediction or guarantee about any result. Descriptions of news reporting are attributed to the outlets that published them and are not findings of fault by any court. The hiring of a lawyer is an important decision that should not be based solely upon advertisements; before you decide, ask us to send you free written information about our qualifications and experience.