A place to discuss all the news and events taking place in the province of Ontario, Canada.
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Speed cameras are a money grab and should be abolished because they don't actually result in safer driving and really is just a revenue generator.
Instead non-highway roads should be narrowed or otherwise calmed (and use that extra space for bike/pedestrian paths), this naturally causes almost all drivers to slow down, which increases safety. (source)
Are speed cameras really effective? There are multiple studies that looked at this.
And the answer is yes, they are:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1963295/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3861844/
The car crashes that happen in Ontario cost society far more ressources (police, hospitals, nurses, medication, surgeries) that any of the money raised by speeding tickets.
Road narrowing is a great idea. It can be applied to local streets.
But the people who hate speed cameras are going to absolutely FREAK OUT if you suggest road narrowing as a potential solution.
re: first study
Results. The relative risk (RR) of a road collision occurring on the beltway after (vs before) installation of speed cameras was 0.73 (95% confidence interval [CI]=0.63, 0.85). This protective effect was greater during weekend periods. No differences were observed for arterial roads (RR=0.99; 95% CI=0.90, 1.10). Attributable fraction estimates for the 2 years of the study intervention showed 364 collisions prevented, 507 fewer people injured, and 789 fewer vehicles involved in collisions.
I looked it up, it looks like the Beltway is functionally equivalent to a US interstate. This makes some sense, as speeds on interstates are going to be higher than on arterials (and the arterials in Spain probably aren't as bad as our stroads in the US).
Nah, I'm someone who hates speed cameras and I'd welcome some narrowing or weaving roads. Lowering the speed on a 60km to 40 km and sticking a speed camera on it makes everyone feel like they're being micromanaged by some new incompetent manager. If they want to lower speed limits, change the design of the road to match.
If you cant reduce your speed from 60 to 40, you are the one that is incompetent.
It costs millions to redesign and refurbish 1 road while it costs thousands to operate the cameras. We should be working towards building safer roads but ill take enforcement in the meantime, lives are literally at risk if we let speeds remain high on our city streets.
Even if every paving company in ontario worked for free year round we could not bring every unsafe, needlessly wide road to a better standard within a year. Nearly every major road in every city and town would need to be redesigned and repaved.
Speeding isn’t an individual phenomenon, it’s a group phenomenon. Groups of drivers peer pressure each other into speeding. Choosing not to speed can result in aggressive drivers tailgating you and hurling obscenities at you.
Designing streets to be physically impossible to speed on (narrow, winding roads) is the ultimate deterrent for speeding. People respond better to feedback the more immediate it is and there’s nothing more immediate (for a driver) than physical obstacles that threaten to hit your car. Getting a speeding ticket in the mail a week after the incident is such a long feedback cycle that the driver is likely to blame the speed cameras, not their own driving.
OTOH, maybe speed cameras as a money grab is a good thing. We have all sorts of sin taxes - alcohol, tobacco, gambling, etc. Why not a sin tax on speeding?
Thank you. You're exactly right.
61 in a 50 is 22% over.
61 is almost 49% more kinetic energy than 50.
As someone who had their life ruined by a speeding driver who ignored a red light, fuck anyone who speeds.
Fuck people that run reds. As a speeder, even I can agree with you on that. I'm so sorry for what happened to you, no one deserves to be put through that.
I'm actually sympathetic to these folks, because there's a bunch of studies that show that people drive the speed that feels safe. You can't engineer a road to be safe for 15 mph over the posted speed limit and be shook when folks do the speed that feels safe (the US does this ALL THE TIME). That kind of engineering is all but guaranteeing that an enforcement control is going to be a money printer.
I've encountered a few roads in my time driving where the speed limit doesn't match actual driving conditions at all.
I think by now we should have the technology to do statistical analyses on actual road data (currently observed speed vs. speed limit speed) to more accurately assign speed limits that are safe enough that enough people actually follow them.
@Gork @three_trains_in_a_trenchcoat
My understanding is, when they design a road they do calculate the "engineering speed limit", the safe speed given road geometry and surface and visibility, etc., but then they mostly ignore it and assign an arbitrary limit from the standard list for that type of roadway.
We botched raising the limit for 400-series. We should have gone to 120km/h with actual enforcement, but what we did was 110 and a wink, and now 1 in 3 drivers do 130km/h.
I’m actually sympathetic to these folks, because there’s a bunch of studies that show that people drive the speed that feels safe.
Problem: Driving faster doesn't make anyone safer, so that's not true. Studies usually show that people drive at what "feels comfortable" for the design of the road, which is vastly different from what's safe.
I've been driving for decades and never felt compelled to drive at excess speeds of what's posted. I've certainly never had the urge to go 90km/h in a 40km/h or 100km/h in a 60km/h zone.
If people are unfit to drive at the posted speed limits, they should consider taking other forms of transportation.
The studies really show that narrow roads make drivers slow down, while wider roads have them increasing their speed.
Make roads like 3 inches wide.
The studies really show that narrow roads make drivers slow down, while wider roads have them increasing their speed.
Because they are uncomfortable or comfortable depending on the road design, not because they want to drive safer. They don't want to hit a plastic bollard, but have no problem driving millimetres away from cyclists, for example. 😱
That's exactly the point... If they drive safer because they don't want to scratch the paint on their car or because the feel some kind of communion with others, what difference does it make? We often chalk up problems to "personal responsibility" when we should be focusing waaaay more on systems and the built environment.
People use things the way they're implicitly built to be used.
What you're describing is what I meant. If you're driving at a speed that feels uncomfortable, it's likely because it feels unsafe. I'm glad you're a human cruise control, because I'm not, I often do vibes based speed control and I'd be very vulnerable to speed traps. I know I'm a bad driver, and I'd much rather take the bus, train, or bike lane if it was realistic to do so; I honestly hate driving.
Their twitter is full of other such wisdumb
What a fuckin' traitor.
I'm only like 99.9% against Trump wanting to revoke citizenships. But the there's guys like this and I gotta think "if he's not going to fuck off himself..."
Wants our government to concede to trump then complains that they nearly need to be threatened to do their job. Pretty sure give up Canadian sovereignty is not listed as the role of our politicians.
Are we sure that twitter account isn't a bot?
Not sure at all. These types of accounts and comments were popping up everywhere at the end of 2024/start of 2025. Suddenly there were lots of pro-51st state "Canadians" all over the internet.
I'm not even sure they aren't just trolling. It kinda feels like rage bait. Or maybe it's a meme for those who get the joke, and propaganda for those who don't.
My impression is that there has been an unspoken compromise between safety advocates and ordinary drivers, with the safety advocates getting to set low speed limits and the drivers getting to ignore those speed limits. Speed cameras are putting an end to that compromise. I wonder if that will generate the political will necessary to increase speed limits - there are, after all, a lot more speeders than safety advocates.
Speed cameras are often implemented in areas where heavy pedestrian traffic exists or a history of car crashes has happened. The goal of the cameras is to reduce speed to prevent crashes and reduces injury and death. The solution is not to raise speed limits just because drivers feel entitled to not follow the limit.
Imagine if we did this for other laws. Well people are still murdering each other even though its illegal so we might as well make murder legal. This may seem like an extreme example but speed is one of the biggest factors in how deadly a crash is, so just increasing the speed limit is basically saying we are okay with more people dying so long as they think traffic is moving faster.
I love bike lanes and public transit. But yeah. Fuck the snitch cams.
If you want to hand out pointless tickets you should have a cop set a speed trap. As per long standing tradition.
It doesn't help that the way these cams are rolled out involves just lowering speeds on roads that have had consistent speeds listed for decades , then dinging people who speed. On the internet you can find extremists of every type. Doing 11 over the speed limit is not in any way equivalent to doing 50 over, nor does lowering the speed limit on existing roads always lead to safety increases or accident reductions. It can sometimes , but the internet would have you believe that it always absolutely works, the 10s of millions cities gain in revenue from this doesn't affect their deployment decisions of cameras at all, and someone doing 11 over the speed limit (often 9 under the former limit on that road) is a terrible human being.
I find that speeders often assume that it is only their driving skill that should define their speed. They don't acknowledge that they will be driving in traffic or what the roads sight lines might be. They are also often delusional about how good a driver they are. There are many times when following a speeder that has woven through traffic that you can visually see all the cars that swerved or hit the brakes so that the "excellent driver" could get through unscathed.
I have to carpool with my boss on occassion who thinks he is one of the best drivers on the road while everyone else is shit and I am terrified everytime he drives anywhere. It's insane how unpredictable he is on the road. He even got pulled over going 115 in a construction zone (60 limit) and the cop SHOULD have had his vehicle impounded but decided to give him a warning and not even the double fine for construction zone, just a regular speeding ticket. If only that cop knew how many tickets he gets every year. Warnings and being nice does not teach him anything.
Ten over is standard her cops don't even notice anything less than 20 over if you aren't in a school zone
Hitting someone at 60km/h vs 50km/h could mean the difference between whether they survive or not. This person should not be driving.
Speed limits are arbitrary.
50 vs 49 or 51 may be arbitrary, but overall there's a relationship between speed and car accidents which makes setting speed limits a real judgement call.
And remember that kinetic energy goes up with the square of the velocity, so a crash at double the speed is theoretically four times as deadly. Even modest reductions in speed greatly increase survivability of an accident.
Isn't there a relationship between the road surface material, angle, width, and surrounds that dictates a safe speed range?
It's not entitlement if the laws make no sense.
I am not from Ontario but I am guessing it's not too different here, I am from Quebec and people here have this feeling of rushing things the moment they touch the wheel like they are always in a hurry, and I think it's probably because of the culture of always needing to do things and want things fast so everyone loses patience and don't wanna lose any time. I seen people even when not driving putting themselves at risk just to save a few seconds. And if you drive at the speed limit people hate you because they think you're going too slow.
The number of people who use terms like idiot, loser, beta etc for people who obey the limit is astounding. Ive heard more speeders say that limit followers should have their lisences removed than vice versa.
My theory is that driving a vehicle feels the same as waiting in a line/queue, since you're not doing anything active. So people try and minimize their time "waiting" as much as possible. Even if they're already traveling at an extreme speed. Basically cars fuck with our brains.
Oh so this is the guy who drives an inch from my bumper whenever I don't speed.
Ontario entitled drivers was one of the tipping points on my pro and cons list of leaving Ontario, to move to BC.
I'll preface by saying I'm a safe driver, no accidents in 38 years of driving.
As a driver of a Honda: I had Chrysler owners try to drive me off the road yelling nonsense about jap scrap.
As a motorcyclist in a curve of on ramp: I was gaining on a lifted truck, not fast or tailgater just started in the ramp later and catching up, douch in truck didn't like that his truck wasn't handling as well so he purpose left the road and drove on the gravel shoulder and gunned it to spray gravel all over the road. Obviously I just back off the throttle to straighten the bike up. While he sped off.
As a cyclist: I had two major ones. A truck didn't like that he had to go around me, he didn't want to leave his lane to pass and just kept honking and yelling get off the road. I countered I have the same right as you. He did not like that so passed me then turned hard to the curb forcing my bike between his truck body and the curb where I had to hop onto the sidewalk.
The other was me cycling on the side of road and passing traffic as they slowed to a stop, some ass threw open his passenger door to block me moving forward. He wanted to be first.
Just losers. BC drivers understand cycling and pedestrians
