Money raised from speeding and red light penalties has surged 2.3-fold over the past five years, according to Office of State Revenue figures. NSW drivers were hit with more than $178 million dollars worth of fines in 2014-15, compared with $78 million in 2010-11. Nearly 435,000 drivers were fined for speeding last financial year – about 1300 a day. You're three times more likely to be caught for speeding than running a red light. However, you're now also three times more likely to get caught for running a red light than you were five years ago. As the connected scatterplot below shows, the Eastern Distributor speed camera (shown in red) has significantly lifted the bar when it comes to revenue raising. It has been the state's top earner every year since beginning operation in early 2012; its annual earnings consistently eclipse those of every other camera in the state.

It's raked in $14.5 million over four years of operation — nearly 1.5 times more than the camera at Cleveland Street in Moore Park (shown in grey). The Cleveland Street camera is the state's second most lucrative, as ranked by total earnings in the five years to July 2015, and has been in operation for the full five years. Revenue-raising for speed cameras is a combination of volume (catching the most drivers) and speed (the more the driver exceeds the limit, the heavier the penalty). Two in three drivers (64 per cent) caught speeding are exceeding the limit by 10km/h or under. Less than one per cent are caught exceeding the limit by more than 30km/h. As the scatterplot above shows, the Eastern Distributor camera excels at both. The camera at Botany Road in Rosebery (shown in yellow, ranked 3rd in 2014-15) catches more drivers than the Cross City Tunnel camera (in blue, ranked 2nd in 2014-15), but the latter makes more money per driver, so we can assume they're caught at higher speeds.

With red light cameras, the penalty is always the same, so the biggest earners catch the most drivers. The heat map below shows the monthly earnings of the state's top 40 red light cameras over the five years to December 2015. The darker the red, the higher its earnings. The most lucrative red light cameras, ranked by total earnings over the five-year period, are on Woodville Road, at Granville and Villawood.