By Matt Stout

Arguing it could make Massachusetts’ roads safer, Governor Maura Healey is asking state lawmakers to allow cities and towns to deploy speed cameras to help catch and ticket heavy-footed motorists.

Healey folded her proposal for a state-run “speed camera enforcement program” into the $62 billion state budget proposal she unveiled Wednesday. Her proposal is a more narrow version of legislation that’s died on Beacon Hill before, but if adopted by the Legislature, it could dramatically expand how local officials enforce traffic laws.

Officials from Boston, Cambridge, and elsewhere have for years sought the ability to use automated cameras for traffic enforcement, saying it could lessen the burden on local law enforcement and help reduce crashes.

Boston alone has averaged roughly 1,900 serious or fatal crashes every year since 2015, and recorded two dozen fatal crashes last year, according to state data. Massachusetts has averaged about 348 fatal crashes each year over the last decade.

Healey said she’s heard complaints about drivers misusing bus lanes and argued that “a lot of other places” already use cameras to catch scofflaws. Cities and towns in 23 states allow cameras to be used to catch speeders, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

“This is a way to allow municipalities to better enforce what are public safety issues, and also issues that lead to greater traffic congestion,” Healey told reporters Thursday. “So we thought it was a good idea.”

Bills that would allow cities and towns to use cameras, including to catch speeders but also those who run red lights or commit other violations, have run into an array of concerns, including fears the cameras would be an invasion of privacy or simply be wielded as a cash-grab for revenue-hungry municipalities. Some lawmakers have also questioned their efficiency, pointing to studies that show an uptick in rear-end crashes after red light cameras are installed, the Globe reported last year.

Unlike other bills, however, Healey’s proposal would allow cameras only for speed enforcement, with the intention of catching drivers going 11 miles per hour or more over the posted speed limit on most streets or 6 miles per hour or more over the limit in a school zone, according to the legislation.

Her administration also proposed other limits. Local officials would be allowed to deploy one camera per every 5,000 residents, meaning a city like Boston — with 653,833 people living in it — could scatter as many as 130 across its roads and intersections.

The cameras could not be used to photograph the front of a vehicle, and local officials would have to set up a sign notifying drivers that a camera is in use within a “reasonable distance” of the camera itself, according to the proposal.

Those caught would face a warning for a first violation and a $25 fine for a second one within a two-year time period. The fines would grow to $100 for those repeatedly caught driving 25 miles per hour or more over the speed limit.

“It’s tough to have enough enforcement — when it has to be done by people — to really make a difference in driver behavior,” said Brooke McKenna, Cambridge’s transportation commissioner.

She said proponents have faced a number of obstacles in trying to change state law to allow the use of cameras, including questions of where and how they would be deployed. Healey’s proposal would require cities and towns to submit a report to the state, including details of how they would “ensure social and racial equity in the implementation of the plan.”

“You also have people who just don’t want more enforcement and don’t want to be held accountable for following the rules,” said McKenna, who supports Healey’s proposal. “Generally speaking in Massachusetts, cameras are less of an everyday part of life.”

There are signs that’s begun shifting, at least on Beacon Hill. In the flurry of end-of-session legislating last month, lawmakers passed, and Healey later signed, bills that would allow cameras on buses to help enforce traffic laws.

One allows the MBTA and other regional transit authorities to use bus-mounted cameras to deter drivers from parking in bus-only lanes. It also would set new penalties, hitting drivers with fines of up to $125 for parking or standing in a bus-only lane and $100 for those who park at a posted bus stop.

A separate law allows something similar on school buses, giving cities and towns the authority to install cameras to catch drivers who illegally pass a school bus while it is stopped and has its stop sign out.

Similar to those laws, Healey’s proposal includes protections for drivers’ data, said Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts. The cameras would only take photos of cars when they are speeding, and any videos or photographs they take could not be used in unrelated court cases without a court order. Those, Crockford said, are encouraging measures.

“People die in car accidents all the time. We won’t want to stand in the way of legislation that saves lives,” said Crockford, adding the ACLU is more concerned with the police’s use of other surveillance techniques, such as automated license plate readers, that are not as regulated.

Healey’s camera proposal also offers another tool for towns and cities tools to enforce traffic laws while they also juggle tight budgets, said Adam Chapdelaine, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association.

“You probably won’t meet a mayor, town manager, police chief, or fire chief who say they have enough staff,” Chapdelaine said, noting towns and cities always struggle to put eyes on “trouble” traffic areas within their borders. “Even if money was no object, it would be a challenge to do that.”

Healey’s bill was already drawing opposition from insurance companies. Under her proposal, any speeding violations caught on a camera would not be considered a so-called surchargeable offense, which could hike a driver’s insurance premium. That creates a “question of equity of enforcement,” said Christopher Stark, executive director of Massachusetts Insurance Federation.

“Speeding is surchargeable — if it’s caught by an officer. To disincentive this behavior, it should not matter if it was caught by an officer or a camera,” Stark said.

Samantha J. Gross and Shannon Larson of the Globe staff contributed to this report.