New cameras are designed to catch Oakland’s speedy drivers. Can they slow the roads?

OAKLAND — The city’s transportation director stood Friday morning at a busy Oakland intersection, explaining how newly installed road-safety cameras will work, when suddenly his voice was drowned out by a car roaring down a nearby road.

The vehicle, nowhere in sight, was apparently going fast enough that its rattling engine could be heard loudly by those gathered at Broadway and 27th Street, where one of the new cameras is mounted to a street light.

“Speeding is a choice,” Josh Rowan...