Life In The Fast Lane: The Case For Keeping Speed Cameras

The Ontario government is forcing municipalities to ditch speed enforcement cameras. People will die. But, hey, that's the cost of saving drivers the inconvenience of a speeding ticket.

Sorry, but the library closes in 15 minutes! Photo by Perry Merrity II on Unsplash

In Ontario, Premier Doug Ford is banning automated speed enforcement cameras. You know the ones: the big, grey boxes that snap a little photo of you blasting through a school zone midday or failing to slow down fast enough coming down a hill at the point the speed limit drops from 60 kilometres per hour to 50 km/h. Ford says the cameras are a cash grab, an affront to hard-working taxpayers with lead feet and somewhere to be. Critics, and experts, say the cameras work, changing behaviour, slowing down drivers, reducing collision rates, and saving lives.

The critics and experts are right that speed cameras work — see Hamilton and Guelph, for instance. But as far as the Ford government is concerned, to borrow a line from The Simpsons: “Sure, it’ll save a few lives, but millions will be late!” In the place of cameras the province is introducing a road safety fund. As Minister of Children, Community and Social Services of Ontario Mike Parsa writes, Ontario will launch

a new provincial fund to help affected municipalities implement alternative safety measures, including proactive traffic-calming initiatives like speed bumps, roundabouts, raised crosswalks and curb extensions, as well as public education and improved signage, to slow down drivers.

These are welcome measures, but presumably someone is going to have to pay for them, and just as presumably the money won’t be equal to the task. Moreover, building out the speed bumps, crosswalks, and more will take time. The measures will add a layer of work and bureaucracy to overburdened cities. The construction will not be an easy, immediate lift. I don’t mind paying or waiting a bit for good infrastructure, but the fund defeats the government’s own logic for replacing the cameras, and there’s no reason you can’t have both.