HONOLULU -- The company that operates the state's new roadside traffic-enforcement cameras has proposed that tickets go only to drivers going 11 mph or more over the speed limit, KITV 4 News has learned.

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It's one of the most closely guarded secrets of the traffic camera system, but deep in the final contract proposal that Affiliated Computer Services submitted to the Department of Transportation is key language stating that the company's $30 per ticket fee is based on ticketing drivers only when they are 11 mph or faster above the speed limit.

At least one former traffic prosecutor, who now defends drivers, said the thresholds make sense.

"They want to at least get above a certain range so they can make a good-faith basis or a good-faith claim when they come into court that this person was speeding as opposed to just exceeding the speed limit inadvertantly," former prosecutor Victor Bakke said.

A reasonable threshold would also reduce the number of court challenges, and account for potential technical errors or slight inaccuracies in the equipment. Unofficial sources have told KITV 4 News that traffic-cam tickets will be issued to people going 10 to 20 percent over the speed limit.

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Nobody from the state would confirm or deny that the 11 mph-over-the-limit threshold proposed by the contractor is an official policy. If that is the case, it would be similar to the informal threshold police in Hawaii have been using for years.

A KITV 4 News study of all speeding tickets issued by police in 2000 shows that of 34,000 speeding tickets issued by Honolulu police, only 243 -- less than one percent -- were issued to drivers going within 10 mph of the speed the limit.

If the traffic cameras are programmed to record only vehicles going over the company's threshold -- if indeed that threshold is 11 mph over the speed limit -- that might help explain the surprisingly low number of speeders being photographed in the first days of the program.

On Jan. 3 -- the program's first day -- only 158 drivers out of 927 drivers caught speeding received citations. On the next day, Jan. 4, the company submitted 178 tickets to the courts out of 630 drivers caught speeding on camera.