For many New York City drivers, the cadences of the common speeding ticket can be unfamiliar. Rare is the need to haggle with a police officer, pleading to be let off with a warning, or presenting the pregnant wife as Exhibit A in a bid for leniency. Rarer is the stretch of urban streetscape where an officer might safely approach an offending vehicle, as he would on a highway shoulder.

Under a proposal now gaining traction in Albany, though, New Yorkers may soon be answering to an authority more suited to the city’s topography: cameras that record the speed of a passing car and issue violations automatically.

Though similar programs have already been put into effect for red-light and bus-lane violations in the city, the bill could signal a sweeping shift for drivers accustomed to a city whose traffic laws can be hard to enforce, cutting against an ethos of getting from here to there as quickly as possible.

The proposal initially calls for as many as 40 cameras to be mounted high across the city, of which 20 can be rotated, ensuring that drivers are never certain when their speed is being tracked.