I found the oddest thing inserted into my Washington Post last Wednesday. Nestled inside the supermarket circulars inside the Food section was an 11-by-17-inch sheet of glossy white paper, folded in half and covered with row after row of Montgomery County addresses.

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       It was bare bones: no photos, no graphics, no color — just an alphabetical listing of roads, crossroads and blocks. And not much of an explanation beyond headlines that read “Speed Camera Corridors” and “Speed Camera Locations (Outside of speed corridors).”

       These were the locations of every current — and future — speed camera in Montgomery County, from 16th Street in Silver Spring to Richter Farm Road in Germantown.

       What gives?

       I called Daniel McNickle, the civilian who manages the Automated Traffic Enforcement Unit of the Montgomery County Police.

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       “We are required to publish a list of our speed camera locations in a newspaper of general circulation,” he said. “There aren’t many left.”

       He meant general circulation newspapers, not speed cameras.

       Of those, there are 77: 38 permanent cameras fixed to poles; 34 portable units (“They look like a refrigerator by the side of road,” McNickle said) and five mobile units inside vans. You’ve probably seen the cameras. And — depending on how fast you were driving — they may have seen you.

       McNickle said the county used to publish only new camera locations by posting little blurbs in the Montgomery Journal or the Gazette.

       “Then in 2018, the decision was made to publish every single actual and potential speed camera location in Montgomery County,” he said. They’re also listed on the agency’s website.

       I wondered: Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of a speed camera? Not at all, said McNickle.

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       “We really don’t want to be sneaky about this,” he said. “We want people to know about [the camera] and to slow down — but also to slow down where they could potentially be.”

       That’s where speed corridors come in. These are stretches of road along which a portable or mobile camera may be moved. That’s to deal with drivers who slow down for a fixed camera, then speed up again once they’ve passed it.

       Drivers may despise speed cameras, but McNickle said his office receives plenty of requests from neighborhoods that want them.

       “We do an assessment to determine whether it’s a good spot or not a good spot,” he said.

       That includes assessing the pedestrian activity in the area, along with collecting traffic data for two weeks with those tubes that run across the roadway and gather information on speed and volume. Certain topological requirements have to be met, too.

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       “We don't want to put a camera on a big downhill or a big uphill or a curve,” he said. “It won't work properly.”

       I confess I’ve been dinged a few times by speed cameras. It’s a sick feeling opening that envelope and finding a fuzzy photo of your vehicle, the license plate enlarged. The ticket doesn’t add points to your license, but it is a $40 fine.

       McNickle said the law stipulates that a citation can’t be issued unless the driver is going at least 12 miles over the speed limit.

       “If you’re on a 35-mile-per-hour road, you have to be going 47-miles-an-hour or faster to get a speed camera ticket,” he said. “If you live on that road — if there are children biking — that’s pretty fast.”

       The District has speed cameras — a lot of them: 91. Virginia has been resistant. The General Assembly passed a law in 2020 allowing speed cameras only near school and highway work sites. (Red light cameras are a whole other thing. McNickle said the law doesn’t require their locations to be published.)

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       In fiscal year 2020, Montgomery County collected nearly $11 million in net revenue from its speed cameras.

       “They do produce revenue, but that’s not our focus,” McNickle said.

       Rather, he said, the idea is to get drivers to slow down. And, given that the county makes the camera locations public, speeders can’t say they weren’t warned.

       Said McNickle: “The more people know where they are, the more they're going to be conscientious when they’re driving. That's our goal.”

       Reunited and it feels so good

       These area schools are reuniting in the upcoming months:

       Bethesda-Chevy Chase High Class 1957 — May 13-15. For information, visit classreport.org/usa/md/bethesda/bcchs/1957/, or call Cathy Britton at 301-299-4671 or Meris Chang at 301-762-4393.

       Calvin Coolidge High Class of 1962 — Sept. 10. For information, call Sam Statland at 301-949-1058.

       Springbrook High Class of 1967 — Oct. 8. For information, email terrymayo23@yahoo.com.