Traffic safety is far down the list of reasons for speed traps

 Here’s some advice for Toronto drivers: On a warm spring day, keep a close eye on the speedometer when heading down a long hill.

If the weather is sunny and visibility is good, it’s 50-50 that a Toronto police officer is standing part way up the other side of the hill, with a radar gun trained on your car.

Police like to tell the public that the prime motivation for enforcing speed limits is traffic safety. I am here to tell you they are full of it.

A story in the Star last year noted that of all cities in North America, Toronto is the speed trap capital. I’ve seen a lot of evidence to support that theory, as recently as Sunday.

I was driving east on Ellesmere Ave., starting down the long hill west of Neilson Rd., when I noticed that a friendly bus driver headed my way was flicking his headlights on and off.
Sure enough, as I started up the other side of the hill I saw a cop standing by a utility pole, which partially obscured him from oncoming traffic, pointing a radar gun at traffic coming down the hill behind me.

It was no problem for me; I kept my speed at 60 k/ph, but it was like shooting fish in a barrel for him. Who hasn’t descended a long hill and noticed they were going 15 or 20 k/ph higher than the limit?

That’s more than enough to get a ticket.

I continued east to Morningside Ave. and turned right to go south. A long hill on Morningside bottoms out near Ellesmere then climbs steeply, on the way south to Kingston Rd.

Part way up, I spot another cop pointing a radar gun at traffic coming down the hill. Two speed traps in five minutes, only a couple kilometres apart.

Traffic was light, the weather was clear and sunny and there was no reason for them to be there, except to top up a ticket quota.

I have often seen Toronto police clocking vehicles coming down a long hill, the most likely place for even careful drivers to slightly exceed the limit.

Aren’t there more important things for police to do than fish for speeders in the most likely places for law-abiding drivers to go just fast enough to qualify for a ticket?

Aren’t there a hundred other places where traffic safety might be more of an issue, but the fishing may not be nearly as good?

 

   

     

    

  

         

Comments

[Rich]

Toronto may have the most speed traps in NA but not the worst ones. My parents travel down south for part of the winter every year & still tell of the speed traps they were caught in near some small towns off the interstate they wanted to explore. Here they regularly take the back roads since its a more pleasant drive than the major highways but no more in the southern US. The speed limit on the two lane road, surrounded by farms, dropped by 25 mph for no reason like an intersection, hills, curves, or buildings & for an extremely short distance of about 150-200 yards or so. About 20 feet behind the much lower speed limit sign was a cop behind a billboard in one case some trees in the other, who nailed them for not hitting the brakes, the speed limit then picked up again to the previous limit before dropping again as they approached the actual town. After getting 2 such tickets 2 days in a row outside of small towns they were going to visit to buy lunch & shop & both in the same state, I forget which offhand but it was a southern state that started with M, both of which had identical very short speed traps used by local cops well before the actual town. I've never heard my father so angry at cops before, he usually defends them no matter what they do, he's certain these speed limit drops were placed very near hiding places for the cops to ensure people didn't have a chance to slow down normally before getting a ticket. They've both got other speeding tickets that never upset them at all but he was so mad about these ones which were obviously a tourist tax since if you live there you know about them if not & you don't hit your brakes immediately upon seeing the signs & who does on an empty road instead of slowing down more normally? you get a speeding ticket. That was many years ago & they still refuse to leave the interstate system to visit any small towns & advise their friends heading south to do the same, till they reach their final destination in Texas where my sister now lives. Perhaps its good for the cops' budget but very bad for small town businesses.

[Alan Rogers]

More important things for police to be doing than "taxing" unsuspecting drivers who aren't doing anyone any harm? Of course there is. Will they do it? Of course not - there's no money in that.