A place to discuss all the news and events taking place in the province of Ontario, Canada.
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Speed cameras are practically a requirement in Korea. People here would be blasting through school zones at 100kph otherwise. No joke. As it is, you can see rich fucks in their fancy cars ignoring them since the only punishment is a fine that they wouldn't even notice.
Bali Bali culture indeed.
You’re not gonna get me to agree on this one. I have gotten two speeding tickets for going 2km over. Thats nothing but another way to fleece and steal from the working class. We all know where the speeders and racers hang out and the cops don’t do shit
Devils advocate: if they are catching such slim margins they equally should be catching people going 5, 10 or 15 over of not more and actually being dangerous.
Yes it sucks to get fined for being in the margin of error, but if it was anywhere a residential or school zone I'd say it's worth it given how easy it is for a child to wander into the street and how little it takes for a car to seriously harm or kill said child.
The best solution is just better public transit so people don't feel the need to drive but getting more drivers to drive safer is a good first step
I would have to see crash and accident data concurrent with the change before I say anything.
Speed cameras definitely work, they're getting better at catching folks as the technology matures.
Of course, they're also a form of state surveillance, generally deployed as a money printer, and generally distract drivers (you see those lines on the road, your vision tunnels, you check speed, and you lose peripheral for about 1--2 seconds).
They'll do anything to actually fix the root of the problem. Speed cameras is an invisible deterrent and usually highly unpopular. What they should have done is change the road design. Anything less is a cash grab since the fines doesn't go back into the road system directly to actually induce long term change.
We also need to talk about the capabilities of modern cars, licensing, and the age and capabilities of the drivers on the road.
Newer cars these days have sensors with emergency braking, but this is not foolproof. However, we know that cars can be made to have more safety features for not only the passengers of the car, but also those on the road. So when will the government mandate more safety features of driving a multi-ton steel box? Here's another more extreme solution, if the highest speed limit in the entirely of Canada is for example...120km/h - then why allow cars go faster than that?
Licensing has been inconsistent. Looking at the kinds of driving happening on the road these days lack of signalling, impaired driving, erratic driving, spatial awareness of other drivers - it's clear that people are getting licensed somehow, one way or another. There's even been cases of delivery truck drivers operating without a valid license.
Then there's the age aspect and those that lack skill due to how little some people drive. You see people with 20+ year old cars and you look inside and it's an elderly person driving below the speed limit. They're causing a massive jam - yet nothing is done about it. In the eyes of the law, they're driving safely. You and everyone's time be damned eh?
Or how about we actually invest in good, cheap, efficient public transport? An actual rail network? A highspeed rail network? Oh wait - this is Canada, we can't have that. We're too fucking broke to have anything these days and gotta go around and beg private capital to come in to 'save us'. Canada Strong alright./s
Anything less is a cash grab since the fines doesn’t go back into the road system directly to actually induce long term change.
Your username is fitting with this one.
Every single municipality I checked out when these first came into effect put all funds above operation fees into road reconstruction for traffic calming measures. I worked with the City of Barrie to directly do a traffic calming assessment primarily funded through the use of traffic cameras.
Or how about we actually invest in good, cheap, efficient public transport? An actual rail network? A highspeed rail network?
I agree, but go check out the comments and petitions against the new high-speed line proposed and you'll see that were in the minority.
What's the constant push toward lowering speed limits instead or pushing for better public transit options and putting proper responsibility on pedestrians?
When I walk across an intersection, I take my headphones off and I'm looking around me to make sure nobody is going to run me down. The number of people I see sauntering across intersections at the speed of smell while staring at their phones and listening to music is too fucking high.
Yeah, pedestrians have the right of way - but who's going to win the fight? I'd rather not end up with a tombstone that reads "But I had the right of way!"
I can agree with you there. It's a shared public space - we all have to take some responsibility.
Yup, but good luck getting through to people. Seems decency and critical thinking are out the window with selfishness and entitlement.
Great, so now we know the areas where the posted speeds should be increased 🤷♂️
Oh, well yeah it'd go up where the cameras were posted, how is this surprising?
Less than ten percent? Not good but I'm surprised it isn't more tbh. I've noticed it especially at rush hour, people whipping through side streets to save eleven seconds
15 km/h faster than the limit is obviously dangerous in most places, you need reduced survival instincts for that
And without speed cameras….how did they prove this?
I hope you're joking? Traffic counters (the two little black wires that you often drive over) can track vehicle speeds. Even if they didn't do that, the traffic cameras could still track average speeds without needing to issue fines.
A traffic counter cannot differentiate one driver from another so it can register the same driver multiple times. What looks like a percentage increase could be the same speeders you had before registering multiple times.
Traffic cameras getting a rough estimate of speed is plausible, but if they can differentiate vehicles accurately enough not to register the same driver multiple times, wouldn’t that be a speed camera which would have been illegal to use here?
Correct, they cannot differentiate between drivers, and neither can the speed cameras still in use for speed tracking.
But the point that pedestrians and kids going to school where these cameras were will care about is numbers of speeders, not if its Joe vs Brenda who's doing the speeding. If before there was much less speeding and now there's more, those kids are at a higher risk.
Even if Joe took a different route, one away from high-risk areas like school zones, and didn't change his habits, who gives a fuck?? There is lower risk for accidents in the areas where kids are being dropped off or walking through. I advocated for additional safety zones around other high-profile zones too - high volume trail crossings, libraries, major parks, waterfront zones, etc. Protect the biggest risk areas from speeding and people might get used to driving slower
Where's the car accident incident report rates?
Raw incident numbers would not express the full picture since incidents are both more common and more severe at greater speed.
That high of a percentage of drivers exceeding the limit doesn’t demonstrate the need for speed cameras, but rather a gross failure of road design and traffic engineering.
Enforcement should come after traffic calming and pedestrianization efforts have failed. North American cities are notoriously bad at that.
All I see is a study that shows places where the posted limit should be increased. If there are concerns about pedestrians then safer crossings, pedestrian education, or road redesigns should be the focus.
I don't understand the constant push toward reducing the speed of road traffic and I say this as somebody who has been a pedestrian and a driver for several decades.
I mostly agree, where it's reasonable. In places with a large presence of pedestrians, I don't exactly, except for on road design. The roads should come up and meet pedestrian level, not pedestrians going to street level, for example. This requires that cars go slower. It isn't an issue of pedestrian education though. Pedestrians shouldn't need education. The design should just work to protect them.
But yeah, usually cars "speeding" consistently is a sign speed limits need increased. Lower speed limits increase the difference in speeds of cars, some going the limit and some going the speed they're comfortable with (the speed fo traffic). This delta causes accidents, and the larger the delta the worse the accident. If people are always speeding, the limit needs to match them.
I think it really depends. Often times the roads existed before the people. If they wanted to live near a 50-80km roadway, that's their choice.
I'm so tired of watching speed limits creep down and people continually crying about speeding when the issue is attentiveness and awareness.
IMO people not signaling intent and running trains through yellow/red lights to make left turns are FAR more dangerous than people going 15-20 km over the limit down straight highways with little traffic. Oh, and people who camp in the passing labe and force people to undertake to get around them.
As for pedestrians, it's people standing on the curb and crossing streets with their heads down on their phones and headphones on. What happened to the rule of crossing as quickly and safely as possible, and paying attention all around your as your cross?
We should also be putting fault in vehicle manufacturers who continue to produce complex touchscreen-based infotainment systems.
Speed cameras ARE traffic engineering, and here is the evidence that they work. They are not the only tool available, but to act like they weren't doing anything about traffic engineering is a bizarre take.
Um, but even with that, the stark difference in the data also shows that the cameras were an effective means of traffic calming.
Enforcers should be very transparent as to where money from fines goes.
Enforcement was for the traffic cameras? Literally every municipality I looked at had a page on their website discussing it. Every one had the fines go first to operation/maintenance of the fine system, then to a road reconstruction fund to further reduce speeding.
Throw it in the river for all I care. The point is to punish people who are breaking the law.
If fines are too annoying to administer, suspend the license and issue lifetime driving bans for repeat offenders. No more whining.
I wish they'd put the same enforcement on people not using blinkers and running red lights to make left turns as they did prople going 15k over limits down straight roads with little traffic around...
