At least 11 Toronto speed cameras vandalized this week

People vandalize speed cameras

Toronto city council decided last week that it will install "larger, more visible and clearer" signs to warn drivers where automated speed enforcement cameras are located in the city.

"HEY VANDALS! THE SPEED CAMERAS ARE OVER HERE!"

They need cameras pointing at the speed cameras to catch the vandals, and maybe cameras pointing at those cameras just in case.
- I would bet good money on it being only a matter of time before they vandalize the cameras watching cameras.
Temples fingers
Ex...cellent!

How about instead of speed cameras you change your road designs? People won't speed if they cannot speed safely.

Make your roads less wide. Add some curves, depending on required max speed, you make the curves larger or smaller. On lower speed roads, add obstacles to drive around.

There are many forms of traffic management that don't require speeding cameras but then again, speeding cameras are for making the government money, not for traffic safety

People won’t speed if they cannot speed safely.
...
I get it, good road design helps stop speeding but the idea that safety even crosses the mind of people going 80 in a 60 is laughable.
The fines should be compounding, after each ticket the fine goes up 10% until people learn to just drive the fuckin limit.
- Any crime you can pay your way out of without any other repercussions just punishes poor people. To the wealthy it's just cost of having fun.
- This is something that has been proven over and over. Make the roads smaller and people automatically start driving slower.
  Sure, thereay still be an eventually asshole but with the right design you could make a risky (for you) 80 in a 60 zone, but you can't do 100 because you wouldn't make it. That already helps curbing the worst but it's also a psychological thing that makes most people slow down to the speed that you want. It's much more effective than speeding cameras but it doesn't make money
- It's not about actual safety, but perceived safety. If the design directly prevents you from feeling like you can go fast, you don't do it.
People won't speed if they cannot speed safely.
You have more faith in humanity than I do.
Honest to god, it's not that hard to do 40 km/h in these zones. They post a sign telling you there's a speed camera coming up. You just have to go 40 for like 20 meters to avoid a ticket.
Why should we socialize the cost of "fixing" the road design, when we can instead make the individuals who speed pay?
- Both is good, because the way our streets are designed are both dangerous and expensive. Narrowing that 40 zone by the school can remove excess road space that now doesn't need to be maintained, cleaned, plowed, or salted. The excess space could be used by school, have trees planted, or be used for alternative transport like transit or bikes.
  The roads are currently designed to prioritize driver throughput and provide "wiggle room" for driver error, often at the expense of people outside of the vehicle. Many of the concepts that engineers use to make highways safe were applied to city streets, which in hindsight maybe we don't want our city streets to be designed like highways.
- We donthat because we found that wide roads make people drive faster unconsciously. If you design roads badly, people will speed, it will be dangerous. Design roads better and you save lives.
  Putting up signs is what most countries have done for decades with exactly 0 results.
  A slightly different post had road fatalities in a graph for the US, Canada, and Australia, showing insane levels of road deaths. A secondary graph was added showing the Netherlands at a fraction of those countries, even though the Netherlands is much more densly populated.
  Wanna know why? Because the Netherlands does this all the time. Any time an intersection has a lot of accidents, they break up the damn thing and put in a completely newly designed one, and traffic deaths go down. A road has too much speeding? They'll tear out that crap, put in a new road designed in such a way that people will automatically drive the correct speed et voila, speeding stops, Ross fatalities go down
  That's why you want to do that
- There will always be new people that speed. And people not knowing the place that speed.
Where do you live that nobody drives unsafely and infrastructure can just be overhauled as soon as a problem is identified? I want to move there!
Why make it more complicated for self driving cars? Several companies already have decent AD systems. Realistically more than 100% of cars will be driven with some degree of automation in the next decade.
Just ticket as a percentage of total wealth. Even billionaires can't afford too many $250M tickets.

I don't really care that much either way for speed cameras. They work in a very limited fashion, but they punish the poor the most, and the money goes to cops.

At the end of the day speed cameras are a solution to a problem that doesn't need to exist. We are failing to use technology available to us for basically no reason - we already know how to slow people and calm traffic without any kind of economic/punitive incentive.

Hey I got a ticket for going 57 in a school zone where the posted limit is 50, except the road only borders the far end of the school yard at the tip of its soccer field, with no way for students to exit, and the road itself is 4 lanes and should really have a speed limit of 60, and it was Sunday... Easter Sunday to be precise, so it was literally a school zone surrounded by days off.
Imagine if I hadn't been caught! I'm a Menace II Society, for sure.
- Where do you live with a 50km/h school zone? That is psychotic.
but they punish the poor the most
They punish people who speed the most. If you make the needle on your dash point to the number that is posted on the road signs, you don't get a ticket.
- I’ve gotten a ticket for going 1 over on a downhill. If you think that’s reasonable, you’re likely one of the idiots who created these things.
but they punish the poor the most
Does being poor compel people to speed or something?
The problem is two-fold: one is that our roads are designed to encourage bad driving behaviour, and drivers feel entitled to drive in a way that's convenient (but not safe).
Have you ever tried to get traffic calming measures implemented in a community, especially around school zones? It's excruciatingly difficult, and a few complaints from NIMBYs will have those measures removed, wasting taxpayer money and not solving any problems.
It's infuriating that low powered micromobility devices like e-scooters are so severely restricted, but multi-ton weapons can be operated with almost no enforcement or consequences.
- Does being poor compel people to speed or something?
  No, but $100+ to a poor person could be the difference between literal life and death.
  $100+ to someone well off or rich is nothing but pocket change.
  The solution to this is sliding scale fines. The better off you are the more you get fined.
  Why should a poor person have to spend 90% of their money on a fine when a "rich" person only has to spend 0.0009% for the exact same infraction.

Replace speed cameras with road diets and other geometric choices that restrict traffic speed without relying on drivers following rules (they don't)

The Ottawa Protocol
90 kph
Speed camera
50 kph
Past speed camera
90 kph
- While not ideal, this can still be useful. In Sweden, we employ speed cameras strategically around areas of higher risk, such as intersections with cars coming onto a larger road with an obscured view. Reducing the speed in that particular spot does probably save lives.
  Still, adjusting the design speed is the preferable alternative, but that does not make speed cameras completely ineffective.
- Nobody drives 90 in Ottawa. Especially not on the 417.
Have you ever seen an idiot driver in a roundabout?
- That's why they put raised safety platforms at the entrances and exits of roundabouts
- There are more design choices than just roundabouts...
This is the way, but good luck getting that implemented. NIMBYs and "frustrated motorists" will push back, and it only takes a few to ruin good ideas.
- Fun thing about design changes, the motorists get less frustrated.
  A big part of our frustration whole driving is that (at least in Ontario) design speed MUST be at least 20kph higher than posted speed.
  So yeah, you get frustrated doing 30kph on a road designed for 60kph. You get less frustrated on a road with no posted limits anywhere that jsut naturally nakes you want to drive a speed that feels safe, and happens to be 30kph.

UK we have had speed cameras for ages. There was a trend for people to either spray paint the lens or even firebomb the camera. So they had to put in a second (video) camera mounted as high as possible to protect the first camera, quite amusing that a safety camera has to be kept safe by another safety cameras, its cameras all the way down.

Personally I think speed cameras that monitor a fixed point are pretty dumb unless that fixed point is an accident black spot such as outside a school or a red light camera for dangerous set of traffic lights. Its far better to have average speed cameras for a large section of road but those are more costly as you need way more cameras to make them work outside of motorways as you need to cover all the junctions properly.

Latest cameras we have in testing can see if you do not have your seat belt done up or are using your phone. Just stopping people from using their phone has to be the biggest step forward we can make with modern road safety.

One of the first speed cameras I remember in Belgium was just behind the crest of a highway. Drivers would give more power to drive up the hill at the speed limit, they'd cross the crest and that same power would make them overshoot the speed limit. So they put a camera right there to maximize the fines. Without the camera there was nothing special about that spot, but with the camera there were a lot of front end collisions. Fine revenue was apparently more important than safety.
Placement of new speed cameras has gotten more sensible with time fortunately, but those old speed traps are still left in place unfortunately. For highways we now have a lot of average speed tracking and that has really improved the flow of traffic. And for villages/towns, there is often a clearly visible lone camera box at the beginning of the low speed zone, those work so well that there is often no camera in them, just the box is enough.
Ah yes, the good old UK where it’s normal to arrest people for saying mean things on the internet and you've disarmed the working class, not to mention the UK created the biggest human rights problem in the middle east when your prime minister Balfour released the balfour declaration and now we have a settler colonial ethno nationalist apartheid state flagrantly committing genocide while using DARVO psychological abuse tactics and pretending to be the victim. thanks for all that white anglo saxon British imperialism!!!!
- Thanks for your contribution!
- Lmao, ill take the downvotes, better than living in lala land like the brits and not accepting the reality of what you've all been trying to pass off as civilized behavior for the last millennia has stained the world while normalizing genocide and exploitation. But god save the king right?

I like reminding my friends in professional law enforcement that these cameras are exactly what losing your job to a machine is about.

We literally do not have enough law enforcement to properly enforce traffic laws. It is part of why average speeds have crept up to 10-20 over the limit. In fact enforcing traffic laws was kinda just something that was thrown at the police when cars were invented and we've never really stopped to think about it since.
- I can't even remember the last time I even saw a cop doing speed enforcement in Toronto. Definitely not on the highways. It makes total sense to automate this, and I highly doubt anybody lost their job over it.

Surely with Toronto Police Services' budget they could better protect speed cameras if they wanted to

They just have to pretend that every speed camera is a Millionaire. Considering anticipated revenue they may as well be.

"It highlights the bigger problem, such as the frustration that the motorists have," Lacroix said.

Frustrated that they can't speed??? Frustrated enough to commit a crime because they can't commit a different crime??? 🤔

Since it was installed in April 2022, the camera has issued over 65,000 tickets and more than $7 million in fines, according to Safe Parkside.

This highlights the bigger problem, such as the complete lack of care that motorists have. 🤭

Keep fining them. And catch the people or persons who are vandalizing the cameras so they can spend the rest of their life paying for the damages.

I don't know how it is up there, but down here in the states those traffic cams are pretty much all run by private for profit companies who take like 99% of the fines for themselves.
So I've got no problem with folks destroying them.
- Yea we've avoided the mass privatization of speed cameras so far and the vast majority of the fines goes into the city municipal budget, where it can be spent pretty much anywhere but often is spent on the roads themselves.
- Our cameras directly benefit the community, so people who destroy them here are criminals with no redeeming justification.

Fuck it, gotta go fast. It would go faster though if all the office workers just took a bus or train. As a service tech, the traffic caused by unneeded trips is maddening when It takes me 45min to go 10km.

Best of luck with that. Many drivers don't like walking. People will fight for the closest parking space to the door of a gym, for crissake.

Instead of wasting money on speed cameras and reducing speeds, we should be aggressively ticketing distracted drivers and pedestrians, and people who struggle to reach the limit in the first place.

wasting money
Who's got a higher salary, a cop or a camera?
Ticketing pedestrians
How about fuck no not in a million years. The LAST thing we need is to tell cops to go out and aggressively harass anyone who "looks distracted."
Even if cars were the responsibility of people walking (they aren't, wtf?) there's a 0% chance this could go smoothly.
- Who's got a higher salary, a cop or a camera?
  What's more effective at changing bad driving behaviour, being caught in the moment and spending 10 min on the side ofbthe road getting a ticket, or getting a ticket in the mail a couple if weeks later when you've probably forgotten that you were even on that road at that time?
- Depends on how often the camera needs to be repaired/replaced and where the money goes for the tickets it writes.
  Cops need to start ticketing:
  people changing lanes without indication
  people turning without indication
  people driving in the inside lane when they're not passing
  people who take more than 2 seconds to react to a light change
  People following bumper-to-bumper forming left-turn trains through yellow/red lights
  People who take more than a few seconds to get back up to speed
  And also:
  Pedestrians who stand on the edge of the curb at the corner waiting for the light to change so they can cross
  Pedestrians standing literally on the edge of the road at the corner waiting for the light to change so they can cross
Traffic calming designs and devices should be preferred over speed cameras.
Narrow streets, chicanes, pedestrian zone height transitions, narrowing the street at pedestrian crossings, etc.
- This is more "fix the symptom instead of the problem" though I do agree that we need better pedestrian infrastructure.
Ticketing people for going under the limit is not wise. The biggest issue is due to inclement weather. We don't want people driving faster than is safe for conditions due to fear of a ticket.
- That's fair, but easy to do: don't have the cops issue tickets for driving slowly on days where there is inclimate weather.

I’m sure the city loves these cameras. Did you speed? Doesn’t matter, the camera says you did so pay up. Also these will ticket you for going even half a kilometer over, you can get a ticket for going 71 in a 70 where a human cop would just let that shit go

... Where a human cop would light you up, slowing down all the traffic around you to safer levels, and give you immediate feedback.
But no you'll just get the same ticket for 10 over 5 days in a row before you notice the camera, and then get 5 tickets in the mail a month later.

Yes, yes, ban all cars, cars bad, drivers bad, noxious exhaust bad, aggressive drivers bad, and so on and so on, ad infinitum. See y'all in December-March at -40⁰C on your electric scooter that is totally non-polluting (what? is electricity totally non-polluting?) trying to navigate uncleared, dilapidated, pot-holed. roads to get anywhere.

Or better still, let's spend billions beginning with car-friendly infrastructure destruction; neglect regular road, bridge, and tunnel maintenance; and create nodes of community: 15-min walking cities. (*walking times vary by mobility, weather, and your health).

Well, villages.

Well, enclaves.

Well, compounds.

Do car-haters ever think farther than the end of their noses? Do they know what cause and effect is? Do they understand that 15-min walking cities make NIMBY communities? New mental health facility? NIMBY. New correctional facility? NIMBY. New addictions treatment center? NIMBY. Who gets them? The Untermensch who cannot afford to resist their placement.

All in the name of regressing away from cars and making tribal enclaves of like-minded, equally righteous, and (perhaps, most importantly) fiscally advantaged homogeneity.

Hating on cars is the tissue paper veneer of classism and, by extension, racism.

You really want to fight climate change? Too late: you have missed that during your fixation on one aspect (exactly as the petro-industry wanted) of the fight. Now start looking at how you're going to survive it's effects. Cause while you were raging against cars, we have passed the PNR on climate devastation.

And if your scooter doesn't have A/C, it's pretty useless in the April-November +40⁰C period as well. Because that's what climate change is: extremes.

At no point did the article claim a desire to ban cars, we are just asking cars to go the posted limit. The idea that hating car dependancy is classist and racist is absurd. Providing free public transit can be one of the most effective ways to lift people up in society. Plenty of people would use their electric scooter in the winter. Tons of people have fun all winter in cold conditions riding snow mobiles, the same gear that works for them could keep a scooter rider warm. The bigger issue for scooter riders is our cities refuse to maintain safe infrastructure for them.
- There is no world an escooter can be ridden even 3/4 of the year in a place like where I live, doesn't matter the gear. (Sask)
You sound completely sane of mind.