"When Will they Ever Learn?"

OK, so another obscure old song lyric reference (Peter Paul and Mary).

But La Belle Province is about to embark on a “trial” of photo radar.

Starting May 19, fifteen mobile and static installations will go into effect. For the first three months, only warnings will be issued. For the next eighteen months of the ‘pilot project’, violators will get fines, but no demerit points.

Um, what is it about Quebec that it can’t learn from other provinces?

Maybe I’d best not go there…

But Ontario did this trial back in the early 1990s, and proved all that needed proving.

First: photo radar did not prove to save lives. In the four month “test period” in Ontario, traffic deaths in the Ontario Provincial Police district where it was most commonly deployed went UP by over 200 percent.

Admittedly, that’s only a single data point. But it hardly supports the thesis.

Second: due to unintelligible plates and various other processing issues, my understanding is that photo radar did not even prove to be very effective as a revenue generator.

Quebec’s Minister of Transport Julie Boulet said that their program is not in fact a tax grab.

Sure she did.

She said the revenue will go to help the victims of road crashes.

Sure it will.

What IS sure is that with the piles of snow that will be on Quebec rear bumpers for months of the year, and with their plates taking even more environmental damage than ours do, what are the chances of Quebec having more success with this plan than Ontario did?

I’ll tell you – zero.

At least for speed limit enforcement, which as regular readers know is pretty much always totally irrelevant to safety, at least on our highways.

But Quebec also plans to use photo radar to catch red-light runners.

Now, I am not aware of what stats are available to support or contradict this application of the technology.

But in general, when it comes to red-light runners, I say toss ‘em all in the slammer.

Comments

[John Frewen-Lord]

Deaths and serious injuries were dropping year on year in the UK until about 1999 - the year that speed cameras were introduced in significant numbers. After then the rates started back up - which of course the police and authorities tried to fudge over. Rates have since stabilised to around what they were in the late '90s, 'proving' (if such things can be proved by such statistics) that speed cameras have absolutely no effect on road safety. In the mostly rural county of Lincolnshire where I live, last year/this year rates are put up on roadside signs. The disparity between different years (sometimes double or more, sometimes half or less) shows that accidents are actually a rare (and statistically insignificant) event. Quebec's proposals sound like a tax grab, just as speed cameras are in the UK.

[Reg]

The only studies (not anecdotes) I have seen show that photo radar works and that includes an extensive British study that took a lot of different factors into consideration.
I fondly remember the short time photo radar was in effect in Ontario. Traffic flowed smoothly, less aggressive driving, less tailgating, very few speeders weaving through traffic. Of course that Ontario situation did not last long enough to draw any significant scientific conclusions.
A US study of red light cameras showed a significant reduction in T-bone crashes, but initially there was increase in less dangerous rear enders.
It would seem that photo radar is a less intrusive means of enforcement than pulling people off a busy multi-lane highway. Safer for the motoring public as well as the police officers.
Enforcement will never totally eliminate dangerous driving.
The reality is that the vast majority of people are good drivers who look out for others as well as themselves other wise a lot more people would be dying because of the ignorant, the arrogant, the suicidal and the rest of us who cannot say that we have never made a mistake.

[Bill Trent]

Dear Mr. Kenzie,
You mention poor condition licence plates in Ontario and Quebec. Why have the provinces not started a replacement program like in Florida? I understand licence plates are replaced every seven years regardless of condition.