A calculated response to speeding

By-the-numbers enforcement where police traffic patrols would focus on streets where drivers are known to be exceeding the posted speed limit is good policy — but so are lower speed limits.

The introduction of high-tech cameras into the Peterborough police service’s anti-speeding arsenal now makes the evidencebased deployment half of that statement possible.

That’s a positive development for more efficient use of police resources, as Chief Stuart Betts told the Peterborough Police Services Board earlier this week.

Exhibit A was evidence from a six-day stakeout of a section of Armour Road south of Parkhill Road East by the service’s new speeding trackers.

The location was chosen because two children were badly hurt in a crash there in December.

Armour Road is a busy north-south collector street and it would be easy to believe drivers tend to ignore the speed limit.

However, data from the cameras showed that wasn’t the case. One outrageously fast driver was clocked at 119 km/h mid-afternoon on a Tuesday, but the average speed for more than 61,000 vehicles was 53 km/h. The speed limit is 50 km/h.

As the chief said, putting cruisers on a street where most traffic moves only slightly faster than the speed limit wouldn’t be a good use of resources. However, the neighbours weren’t just asking for more patrols and more tickets. They want a lower speed limit, something police can’t deliver but city council can.

Lowering the limit to 40 km/h is good policy, one more and more Ontario cities are adopting.

Cambridge city council just decided that 40 km/h will be the limit on all residential streets. That decision follows a two-year pilot project in some neighbourhoods. Toronto started similar speed reductions in 2015 and others have joined in since the province explicitly gave municipalities control over speed limits three years ago.

Toronto is something of a separate case in that it has had a major issue with pedestrian fatalities and already had 40 km/h zones in high-risk areas. When those were cut further, to 30 km/h, collisions fell by 28 per cent and serious injuries and fatalities by 67 per cent. Studies show that if a vehicle is travelling 40 km/h instead of 50 km/h — now the standard for Peterborough streets unless marked otherwise — a pedestrian who gets hit is more than four times as likely to survive.

Peterborough is working to make neighbourhood streets safer for children, and for all pedestrians and cyclists, a need brought home in March when a three-year-old standing in the driveway of a west-end street was hit and killed by a car that had left the roadway. Its Calm Street PTBO project is set to start delivering low-height speed bumps and better signage and road marking in selected neighbourhoods.

The previous city council also set the speed limit on Hunter Street East through East City at 40 km/h.

While those should help, a reduced city-wide speed limit brings the safety campaign to every neighbourhood.

It should be accompanied by a more enforcement-driven version of the Armadillo cameras police now have. They track speeds but don’t identify the vehicle, so whoever was at the wheel of that 119 km/h rocket won’t lose their licence for stunt driving.

Automated speed enforcement (ASE) cameras are the next level up. They used to be called photo radar cameras and were dropped from the traffic safety tool box years ago when people branded them as cash cows that generated revenue for governments but didn’t slow traffic. However, evidence shows ASE does reduce speeding.

As Chief Betts said, evidence-based enforcement is the most effective way to use resources — and to make streets safer for everyone.

Lowering the limit to 40 km/h is good policy, one more and more Ontario cities are adopting