When a few infants started to cry about having to face the consequences of their actions, political opportunist Doug Ford saw a chance to score some cheap points. And so it was that he banned municipalities from using the speed cameras that had been allowed a few years earlier by that absolute working man hating idiot…Doug Ford. Assuming that your brain works like at all, I bet you can figure out what happened next.
A new report shows Toronto has seen a dramatic spike in speeding in the months since the Ontario government scrapped automated speed enforcement cameras.
The report, which Toronto city council is set to consider at its meeting this week, shows the percentage of drivers travelling at least 16 kilometres per hour over the posted limit on some streets surged over 400 per cent after the cameras were removed last November.
Vehicle speeds increased at 101 of 104 locations with comparable before-and-after data, and the proportion of vehicles travelling 11 km/h or more over the posted limit increased from two per cent to 8.1 per cent, the report shows.
The increase in speeding was “generally more prominent” on streets with a posted limit of 30 km/h, it says.
So school zones, essentially.
The government has promised what it calls more effective speed enforcement measures that will be rolling out over time. So far, though, the highest profile idea they seem to have come up with is to increase the speed limits that people routinely ignore on the province’s already dangerous highways. Makes sense once you realize that making things worse and more dangerous while cutting off much needed revenue has pretty much been the Ford way in almost every situation all along.