Premier Ford,
We are extremely concerned about your directive to remove speed safety cameras in Ontario. Along with the Association of Municipalities, the CAA, Ontario police forces and the Ontario Traffic Safety Council, we believe in the evidence that previously collected data show: fining people who don’t comply with speed limits helps: it leads to drastic safety improvements.
This makes a good case for continuing the use of cameras to maintain speed compliance. The ultimate goal of speed enforcement is obviously that people adhere to speed limits. Existing data shows that speed compliance quickly improves and is maintained after cameras are installed. Fewer and fewer tickets are being issued by each camera every year.
This trend is already happening: in Ottawa, as the enclosed graph shows, speeds have considerably dropped at road segments where cameras have been placed. Speed cameras work! Cameras in Ottawa are overwhelmingly placed in areas near schools. Removing cameras would recreate dangerous situations in those school zones. And let’s not forget people with disabilities and our aging population, who may take longer to cross roads.
Many safety experts strongly support the use of automatic speed cameras as does the majority of Ontario drivers (73%). In Ottawa, speed compliance went up from 16% to 81% in speed camera zones; the instances of high end speeding in those zones went down from 14% to less than 1%. Those are amazing results.
Therefore we ask you to reconsider an end to speed enforcement with cameras and allow technology to do its work to protect the lives of Ontarians. Using cameras allows police officers to do other important work. This is about safety for every Ontario resident, not a cash grab.
Respectfully,
Strong Towns Ottawa
