Ding Ding Ding.

If they had given council members a device to shut off the cameras for themselves and rich donors then they wouldn’t have shut it down.

Maybe they should consider changing the speed limits a bit.

We need a mix of both. Yes people should be following the rules, but the truth is some people don’t and with how normalized driving is, testing standards are pretty relaxed. Most people were tested as teenagers and now just rely on getting tickets to keep us in line, meanwhile many trades and certificates require retesting to stay valid. It would be horrendously expensive to retest drivers, but i think regular retesting should be done and the bill should be paid for by the drivers.

Currently it feels just as safe to do 80 in most 60 zones. Changing the design to make speeding feel more risky and feel unsafe will reduce speeding and let people rely less on their speedometers.

My coworker doesn’t like to speed. His new van doesn’t have cruise control. The 10 speed automatic transmission can let you creep from 100 to 115/120 pretty easily and relatively unnoticeably on an empty road. He complains how half his time driving hes constantly checking the speedometer and feels he is paying less attention to the roadway because of that. This issue isn’t as simple as check the speedometer more often. Vehicle and roadway design plays a factor as well.

It is also a infrastructure issue. When the lane of a 40km road is built exactly as a freeway lane and drivers have been allowed to creep the average speed to 15-20 over the limit, it can literally feel like you’re the one doing wrong when doing the limit as most other cars fly past you.

The psychological effects of lane size, other vehicle speeds, and overall roadway design needs to be considered if we actually want to make our streets safer.

Design the roads so that they are unpleasant to use above the speed you are trying to achieve. This method has had great success in the Netherlands.

Last year, I think it was on the War on Cars podcast, their guest was a disillusioned traffic engineer that called his entire field “a fraud discipline.” Like they put absolutely no critical thought into their designs as long as they are built to the exacting code.

Edit: Found it, it was an episode from a few years ago.

I was getting it mixed up with this other episode.

Aaand there it is. You’re a speeder and therefore a dangerous driver and refuse to take responsibility for the fact that you are making roadways more dangerous for yourself and everyone around you. You don’t see yourself as a bad person, so the fact that people like you could get punished for behaving in a way you think is fine and redeemabke makes you angry. You’re impatient and want to save a few minutes of “lost time” from traffic and believe the solution is to speed rather than leaving a few minutes earlier, advocating for traffic calming measures, fewer cards on the road, more effective roadways, effective public transportation etc. all of which would make it safer and easier for everyone, including yourself, to make it where they need to go on time.

Try understanding. The road was already designed to be safe at 80kph. They lower it down to 50kph because of folks such as the ones who brake at the green light because the count down timer for the walk signal hit zero. Or the ones who don’t know where the fuck they are going, panick miss their turn and slam on the fucking brakes in the middle of a 3 lane road instead of pulling a u-turn 100m up the road. Then they try the bulshit of traffic calming shit by retiming the lights so every light in 10km stretch will be red when you get to it. Fucking phenomenal way to prevent irritation.

Drive like a Christian Motorist

So no example of a city that has successfully implemented all these ideas and was better for it?

Because there’s lots of cities that have successfully done mostly the opposite and are better for it (Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Montreal, Paris, Bergen, Oulu, etc)

Sure, if you’re going to make the city fully designed for pedestrians and cyclists, with proper public transit connecting cities that would be fantastic.

Shit, Europe also has the Autobahn, but we’d be fucked if we tried to have a highway like that over here.

For sure! One of those changes requires money and time, and one requires people to pay attention. Should be an easy choice which should get implemented now vs in 5-10yrs.

I dislike the infantalization of the public, and the idea that people can’t be trusted, so we should make the roads such that they NEED to follow the limit feels stupid.

now just rely on getting tickets to keep us in line, I mean if thats our system and there isn’t enough push to retest us regularly, then yeah, I’m not opposed to getting tickets. My city has installed them throughout our community safety zones, and I got dinged once at 8km.hr over. Sure, it sucks, but I was the one in the wrong. The idea of removing them, or me saying its the fault of the road design is ridiculous. I chose to go that speed, largely because we’ve been able to speed at 5-10km/hr over the speed limit with no consequences for my entire adult life. Now I see a community safety zone and I go the speed limit, regardless of where I am or what the road ‘feels’ like I can drive.

The 10 speed automatic transmission can let you creep from 100 to 115/120 pretty easily and relatively unnoticeably on an empty road.

If he’s on a highway, then learn what 100 feels like in your new car. It’s an adjustment. I work in road design, and the safety standards that are required when designing highways trump concerns over speeding. People are bad judges of what is a ‘safe’ speed, and building highways around how fast people feel comfortable going leads to more accidents and more dangerous accidents.

That being said, I’m all for narrowing lanes, adding MUPs or widening sidewalks, all of which can occur at the same time. But the transportation master plan and/or asset management queue is built up for the next ~10 years (minimum), and updating or changing that is a very expensive process most places dont have the money for.

From the article, New Westminster Drive was the highest (9,000+ tickets). The road was redone in 2015 (with no changes to the alignment or width). That means they’re likely looking at a minimum of 15+ years before they’ll rebuild the road, which is whats required to adjust curblines, narrow the road, or otherwise change the alignment. Likewise Ansley Grove Road was redone in 2010, and won’t be rebuilt for 10+years.

Those roads are all four lane urban roads with few intersecting streets and long stretches for motorists to get up to speed. Speed enforcement is the simplest and fastest method to address the problem now. Sure, petition your local council to change what their standard road cross section is, but that won’t change anything for 15+ years. ___

After more than 32,000 speeding tickets were handed out in just three weeks by new automated speed enforcement cameras in community safety zones, council in the City of Vaughan decided to pause the program.

Mayor Steven Del Duca put forward the motion last week to pause the tickets until September, when council is due to receive a report from staff on ways the city can create more effective signage about the presence of cameras.

Boy, nothing gets by you eh? I was pretty overt from the get-go that I tend to drive slightly above the limit when it is safe to do so.

As for people who can accelerate and people who speed being the biggest danger on the road, I’d say the people retarding the flow of traffic, the people who expect us all to be psychic and know when they’re about to change lanes without a blinker, and the people turning left on a long yellow light or sneaking in behind on the red are far, far worse.

It’s difficult living in a world of mentally slow people who can’t process for shit, so there’s no sense trying to argue with you here. Just keep driving like a putz and enjoy the fact that while you can’t grasp the concept of a blinker or reaching the limit, cops are aggressively going after people who can reach limits and are able to process things at an above average rate.

It’s so telling that when I say speeding is dangerous, you believe that I don’t also think that not using your blinkers, not leaving the left lane for passing, and running red lights is dangerous. Take responsibility for your actions instead of building a strawman to feel justified in your behaviour.

They can’t understand, much like they can’t process things when driving 80kmh. They are, no doubt, one of the people doing the limit in the inside lane with 0 intention to pass the car beside them and get back into the appropriate lane.

But here they are telling us how everybody else is a problem.