Comment 80286

By Borrelli (registered) | Posted August 31, 2012 at 10:21:58

If there was sufficient political will to stop bowing down before the driving masses and actually enforce speed limits, you wouldn't need more cops or photo radar: you just need a few more stationary cameras and simple math.

We're already used to seeing MTO traffic cams tell us what highways are gridlocked, but it wouldn't be a huge technological leap to use a similar type of system that the 407 uses for billing in order to ding speeders on the 400-series highways.

A hard average speed limit of, say, 120km/h could be enforced by noting the times and distances travelled by cars along the highway and billing the car owner, like photo radar. Sure, you're gonna speed up to 130km/h to pass some truck, but as long as you stay under the average over a 2 or 3km zone, you'd be fine.

I tend to prefer this method because its blind, fair, automatic, and provides 100% assurance to drivers that they will be dinged. Plus, it frees up traffic cops to focus on other infractions or duties.

And Nicholas, it's not just drivers that are upset about cyclists breaking "certain traffic laws"; some of us peds have a hate-on for them too. With all due respect to the dozen or so responsible cyclists who all seem to congregate on RTH, many of your two-wheeled brethren in this town have been a public safety menace ever since they cowardly decided to shift the risk for using roadways from themselves to pedestrians. I understand that the roads in Hamilton are dangerous to cycle on, but that's no excuse to put pedestrians at risk by treating already narrow sidewalks as bike lanes.

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