Ontario Premier Doug Ford has threatened to remove all speed cameras in Ontario. Despite opposition from numerous municipalities and safety organizations Ford has refused to change his mind calling the cameras a “cash grab”. However no one has explained the details about why this criticism might apply. Official news reporting agencies could have explained those details but they have not.
Who is the private vendor who operates the cameras? How much does the private vendor earn from this ticketing activity? How much do municipalities earn from this ticketing action? Is there a conflict of interest in purposely lowering the speed threshold so that more ticketing money can be generated? How many drivers were ticketed for going, say, 5 km/h above the posted speed limit? The answers to many such questions would clarify whether the speed cameras were being used to generate income rather than to improve traffic safety.
If Premier Ford was genuinely interested in improving traffic safety he could have required that speed camera operations be adjusted to a higher threshold and this has been called for by many organizations responding to Ford’s illogical threats. A higher threshold would mean that only the truly dangerous drivers would be apprehended rather than a large portion of the travelling public who are not a major safety threat travelling just over the speed limit. From the viewpoint of someone who has studied collision causation for over 40 years, it is of less importance to reduce the average travelling speed of the entire population of drivers at a site. Rather what is more important is to apprehend that small segment drivers who are travelling at very high and dangerous speeds. From the experience of Gorski Consulting it is this small segment of dangerous drivers who cause a much higher percentage of the safety problems and only speed cameras can detect them efficiently. The cost of sending a police speed enforcement unit to catch such select dangerous drivers is prohibitive and current police forces are not geared to increasing their speed patrols when so many other emergencies take up their time.
The removal of speed cameras is a dangerous act which will give many dangerous drivers a “wild west”, open road, to speed without much consequence. It is the combination of municipal lack of accountability for speed camera operations along with Premier Ford’s illogical reasoning that will cause this dangerous situation to develop.
You must be logged in to post a comment.