In Seattle, Washington, a picture is worth a thousand words, then the value of video… is priceless.

Instantly save time and resources.

With RoadProof, you can save thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time tracking down the video data you need, for whatever your end use case might be – whether it’s an accident case or criminal investigation.

Recorded video data that used to take days or weeks to find, can now be searched for, located and downloaded in a matter of minutes using the platform.

“The platform continues to be vital and a remarkable tool. It’s a great asset to our agency for all of our cases.”

Master Sergeant John A. Boos
Traffic Homicide Investigation, Florida Highway Patrol – Florida

Video, weather and incident data at your fingertips.

Seattle Traffic Camera Archive: Your Guide to SDOT & WSDOT Camera Networks

If you’ve been in an accident in Seattle and you’re wondering whether a traffic camera caught it, the answer is probably yes. Seattle has one of the more extensive camera networks in the Pacific Northwest. The harder question is whether that footage still exists by the time you go looking for it.

This guide breaks down how Seattle’s traffic camera system actually works, who runs what, and what your options are when you need archived footage.

Seattle’s Traffic Camera Network: SDOT vs. WSDOT

Seattle’s camera network is split between two agencies, and understanding the difference matters when you’re trying to track down footage.

SDOT (Seattle Department of Transportation) covers city streets. These cameras sit at busy intersections and arterial roads throughout Seattle’s neighborhoods. SDOT publishes a daily-updated list of its camera locations through the city’s open data portal, so the location data is accessible. The cameras themselves, though, are another story.

Here are some of the important traffic cameras in this area:

• Airport Way S & S Lander St
• SR 99 & S Atlantic St
• 5th Ave S & S Washington St
• 23rd Ave E & E Cherry St EW
• Fairview Ave N @ Valley St
• Alaskan Way & Union St
• 2nd Ave & Lenora St
• Denny Way & Terry Ave
• Elliott Ave W & W Mercer Pl
• Aurora Ave N & Howe St

WSDOT (Washington State Department of Transportation) handles the freeways: I-5, I-90, SR-520, and the rest of the state highway system in and around Seattle. WSDOT runs its own network, its own data feeds, and its own APIs, independent of anything the city does. There are roughly 138 WSDOT cameras on I-5 alone between Seattle and Tacoma. That’s a lot of eyes on the road.

Both agencies make their camera feeds publicly accessible in real time. The SDOT Traveler Map covers city streets; WSDOT’s real-time freeway map covers the highways. You can pull up either one and see current conditions at a given location. The images typically refresh every two to four minutes.

What neither system does is save anything.

The Problem With Seattle’s Public Camera System

Here’s the thing most people don’t realize until it’s too late: Seattle does not archive or retain any images from its traffic cameras. SDOT is explicit about this on its own public pages. The live feed refreshes, the old image disappears, and there’s no official replay.

WSDOT operates the same way on the highway side. You can watch what’s happening right now, but once that moment passes, it’s gone from the public system.

This isn’t unique to Seattle. Most public traffic camera networks across the country are built for traffic management, not evidence preservation. Storing continuous video from hundreds of cameras is expensive, and most agencies simply don’t do it. The result is that thousands of accidents are recorded, and then that footage is quietly overwritten before anyone can request it.

For most people, by the time they’ve figured out which agency owns which camera, drafted a records request, and sent it to the right department, the footage has already been deleted. That window can close in hours, not days.

Who Actually Uses Seattle Traffic Camera Footage?

When footage is preserved, it gets used across a wide range of situations.

Attorneys and accident investigators rely on camera video to establish exactly what happened. Witness accounts conflict. Police reports miss details. Video doesn’t. For car accident cases, footage from an intersection camera can show the full sequence of events leading up to a crash, including vehicle speeds, signal status, and driver behavior in the seconds before impact. That kind of evidence doesn’t just support a case; it often settles it faster.

Law enforcement uses real-time camera access for situational awareness and post-incident review. After an accident or crime, officers can use archived footage to piece together a timeline, identify vehicles, and verify or contradict witness statements.

Insurance companies pull footage to verify claims and protect against fraud. A video that contradicts a fabricated account of an accident can save significant money on payouts and legal exposure.

Traffic engineers and city planners use routine camera footage to study congestion patterns, evaluate signal timing, and identify dangerous intersections. Seattle’s most accident-prone junctions often end up flagged for new camera installations in part because of what prior footage reveals about driver behavior at those spots.

How RoadProof Solves the Footage Problem in Seattle

RoadProof was built specifically to address the gap between what public traffic cameras record and what actually gets preserved.
The platform ingests the same live camera streams from SDOT and WSDOT that the public can see, and archives them continuously. That means if there’s a camera near the intersection where your accident happened, RoadProof has likely been recording it. The footage is stored for a minimum of one year, which is vastly longer than anything the city or state retains.

When you need footage, you don’t have to figure out which agency owns which camera, file multiple records requests with different departments, and wait weeks to find out the video no longer exists. You search a map, find the cameras near your incident location, and pull the archived footage from the relevant time window. The whole process takes minutes instead of weeks.

RoadProof also layers in weather data and incident reports, so you’re not just watching video in isolation. You can see what the road conditions were at the time of the crash, whether any incidents were reported in the area, and how all of that fits together into a complete picture.

The system was developed in partnership with law enforcement and crash reconstruction specialists, which shows in how it’s designed. It’s built for investigators and legal professionals who need reliable, timestamped evidence they can actually use. Law enforcement agencies get access to RoadProof for free. For legal teams, the time saved versus manually chasing down footage from multiple agencies adds up quickly.

For attorneys working accident cases in Seattle, the practical advantage is significant. After an accident on Mercer Street or a freeway incident on I-5, the relevant camera footage is retrievable through a single search, whether or not the city or state still has it on their end.

What to Do After an Accident in Seattle

If you’ve been in an accident and you think a traffic camera may have recorded it, the clock starts immediately. Don’t wait to see how the insurance claim develops before looking for footage.

A few things worth doing right away:

1. Note the exact location and time of the accident, including the direction you were traveling and any intersections or highway mile markers nearby. Take photos of any cameras you can see at or near the scene. Even knowing which direction a camera was pointed can help narrow down what it captured.
2. If you have an attorney, get them involved as early as possible. RoadProof works with licensed attorneys and law enforcement, not with individual members of the public directly. Your attorney can access the platform and pull footage on your behalf. If you don’t have an attorney yet, RoadProof can connect you with one in the Seattle area who has access to the system.
3. The sooner that process starts, the better. Even with RoadProof’s extended retention, the best practice is to preserve evidence before it’s needed rather than scramble for it after.

Seattle’s traffic cameras are recording constantly. The question is whether that recording gets preserved long enough to matter. For anyone who needs footage for a legal case, an insurance claim, or an investigation, RoadProof is the practical answer to a problem the public camera system wasn’t designed to solve.