Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[danbrotherston]

I wonder if the cameras would have seen less push back if they hadn't been introduced alongside reduced speed limits (often along arterial roads). I think it's easy for people to get the impression they are cash grabs when they ask 1) why were the speed limits not lower here before the cameras, and 2) why are the cameras only used on segments of road surrounded by higher speed limits?

While I don't think it's the case in WR yet, from what I understand some other cities have speed cameras on stretches of road with an "arbitrary" drop in speed limit and no school zone

I also wish we could move away from framing this as a "think of the children" problem. That argument is almost always paired with poor intentions, and surely casts some doubt on the program. Yes, children are stupid (relatively speaking, at least) and should have the freedom to play, grow, and learn without being injured. But I don't see why all citizens shouldn't deserve that same freedom. Maybe this is just the most effective political approach for convincing mindsets I don't understand.

Lastly, the questions I posed at the start got me thinking: Wouldn't automated speed enforcement be far more effective at saving lives if we used them in places with higher (design) speed limits, rather than lower, given the non-linear relationship between velocity and kinetic energy?

Which other cities? I am sure this has happened somewhere. And I'm sure it's happened in the US. But I hear this kind of narrative all the time, but I never hear any specific examples relevant to Ontario.

As for the introduction coinciding with lowering limits? I don't think this was the case? IIRC the speed limit reduction was years after the introduction of cameras (albeit it might have coincided with actually installing the cameras given that if I recall there was a single camera in the region that was moved between all the school zones after a while).

I also don't think these were used just "anywhere" but were ONLY in school zones and community safety zones. Pretty much the most gentle possible introduction of the cameras, and yet we still have people like Kodra asserting their belief they should be allowed to speed past schools.

I do completely agree that we should have safe roads (however we achieve that) everywhere, but given that we aren't even willing to do it outside schools at this point, that basically seems a moot point. I mean, I agree people who invoke "think of the children" are almost always full of shit...but they do it for a reason...it's effective. But if you want to know how full of shit they are...I suspect there's a lot of overlap between "think of the children" and "I deserve to speed past schools without fear of a ticket".

Would automated enforcement be more effective if it was used in higher speed areas. Maybe...but possibly not. Places with higher speed limits don't need speeding drivers in order to reach lethal speeds. If you're on the 401 it doesn't matter too much if you're going 105 or 115...if you hit an immovable object, you're quite likely to die. Where as in a school zone, at 30km/h most collisions are survivable even for pedestrians (although maybe not for children vs. a 2 tonne pickup truck), so it takes someone who is...for example going over 40km/h to make that collision lethal in the majority of cases.

So on the 401 if everyone is doing the speed limit, we still have deaths, but in a school zone...only people who choose to drive an unnecessarily large vehicle kill people.

But they're coming out now, so I guess to some people that convenience of not worrying about a ticket is worth a few splattered children.