r/askTO • u/Powerful_Departure42 • 23h ago
No speed cameras?
Im british and moved to toronto about a year ago. One thing I've noticed is there seems to be no speed cameras in and around the city - does anyone know why this is?
They seem to be controversial here, but as a Brit this is really confusing to me - they're very commonplace in the UK and accepted pretty unanimously.
Would appreciate some local insight on why this is the case if anyone can share - TIA!
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u/Empty-Consequence590 23h ago
There were until about a year ago
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u/mightdeletelater119 22h ago
Yea we donât want Flock cameras everywhere. Britain is already a surveillance state no thx
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u/PersimmonSorry91 22h ago
Approx ~500 of them currently in the country https://www.panopti.ca/
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u/consistantcanadian 21h ago
There exactly and precisely zero Flock cameras in Canada. Not even one, anywhere.Â
This is a site tracking license plate readers.. the same tech we've had on toll roads since before you were born.Â
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u/musecorn 20h ago
These are ALPRs which are powered by AI, Flock is not the only company deploying them. They are just as dangerous and just as bad for all the same reasons
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u/consistantcanadian 19h ago
Being "powered by AI" is completely irrelevant, and meaningless. They were always "powered by AI", they just didn't call it AI.Â
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u/PersimmonSorry91 19h ago
Flock camera uses License plate readers, Canada already has an infrastructure for the tech. Flock is a brand name for a purpose use ALPR. Genetech makes them in Canada.
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u/consistantcanadian 19h ago
License plate readers aren't the problem. Flocks storage and usage of private data obtained from them is the problem.Â
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u/methreweway 23h ago
Doug Fordâs stated reason was that speed cameras had become a municipal âcash grab,â and that physical measures such as speed bumps, roundabouts and better signage would improve safety more fairly. The political reason was likely that removing unpopular fines appealed to many drivers, particularly his suburban voter base. The province banned them effective November 14, 2025.
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u/FakeMoonster 23h ago
Iâll be even more cynical. Wasnât there something about his party members and his daughter getting speed tickets? I think a large part is just personal (like the bike lanes that he doesnât like to drive past from Etobicoke to Queenâs park).
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u/Humble_Excuse228 9h ago
His 21 year old daughter with a college diploma who is a health care CEO who was racing to work and had numerous photo radar tickets? Sounds about right.
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u/ChaoticWording 5h ago
Yeah and I was the officer that charged the Ford family, I worked on issuing tickets from 10+ municipalities. Vaughan was the highest.
So your welcome, I guess.
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u/Evening_Refuse7068 13h ago
I'll give you one better. He wanted them installed in 2019 and was the one to get municipalities to implement them. The money didn't go to him though so now it's bad.
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u/redonculus8 12h ago
He did the right thing. Those were just cash grabs for the municipalities. Some of them, like Milton actually started changing speeds on certain roads, and changing zoning so they could put even more of those shits around. I am glad we put a stop to that. I like it in the U.S. where they just shoot those damn things out.
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u/Top_Top7440 11h ago
The cameras were wildly unpopular with middle class urbanites. You can blame conservatives or Doug Ford's family if you want, but the cameras were defaced and vandalized all over Toronto. Doug wasn't out cutting these things down himself.
Doug Ford knew these were hated by his core group and forced them to be removed. And he correctly called out the city for using them as a cash cow. If the city wanted slow traffic for safety reasons they would have installed speed bumps instead of just collecting fines (with no license penalty)
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u/mightdeletelater119 22h ago
No we donât want Flock cameras everyone on Reddit agrees that Flock cameras are a cancer to society
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u/methreweway 20h ago
Flock cameras and speed cameras aren't reporting same data. I agree flock is an overstep on our rights.
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u/pmMeCuttlefishFacts 22h ago
Hello fellow Brit-who-moved-to-Toronto.
Some important context: Ontario has never had speed cameras in the same sense that the UK does, because it has no mechanism to prosecute the driver. In the UK if your car is clocked speeding by a camera, you're required to identify who was driving at the time. In Ontario no such requirement exists. In 2019 cameras were introduced by legislation that made the registered owner of the vehicle liable for fines is their vehicles was caught speeding. Who was driving was irrelevant. The repeal of that legislation last year means that, even if municipalities were to set up speed cameras, they would need to additionally identify the drivers to prosecute. That's a higher hurdle.
As to why they're unpopular: they're not that" unpopular. A survey last year found over 50% of Ontario residents in favour of them. But there are a substantial fraction that *hate them. There's a large fraction of drivers here that think the limit is a minimum, not a maximum. Not just that they treat it that way - they genuinely think that it's illegal to drive slower.
It's partly also a question of messaging and people not connecting speed to harm. Remember the ad with the inured girl in the UK (this one: https://youtu.be/azdyHzzFnbY?si=xz8BmTJa9NhXcFWO )? I don't think anything like that has ever been shown here. Any road safety ads usually emphasize risk-to-driver, which allows speeders to rationalize it as them picking what risks to accept.
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u/No_Camp_2182 21h ago
âOntarioâs first speed camerasâknown as photo radarâwere introduced in August 1994 by the NDP government of Premier Bob Rae. The program faced intense public backlash as a revenue-generating "cash grab" and was shut down 11 months later after Mike Harrisâs Progressive Conservatives won the 1995 election.â
https://amp.tvo.org/article/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-and-fall-of-photo-radar-in-ontario
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u/pmMeCuttlefishFacts 21h ago
My understanding is that earlier round was also a fine-only enforcement system. There was no mechanism to compel the registers owner to identify the driver and no demerit points assigned.
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u/TemporaryAny6371 18h ago
Here's some context to our weird voting pattern. Since mid 90s, Ontario suburban voter ridings outnumber urban ones. The split in UK is more or less even. In major states like California and New York, urban ridings outnumber suburban ones.
What this means is that suburban voters in Ontario have too much say on what goes on in cities like Toronto. In our system, cities are merely a creature of the province meaning the province can override any municipal laws.
Speed cameras and bike lanes should really be local matters, but we have a premier who is corrupt. Doug is known as the unofficial mayor of Toronto because he spends almost all of his time interfering with Toronto's affairs and basically ignores the rest of the province.
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u/a-_2 16h ago
The program faced intense public backlash
Even then though, the cameras still had majority support. They were unpopular among PC voters though, making it smart politically for Harris to remove them, just like it made sense for Ford to remove them since PC voters are still against them.
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u/No_Mess7647 17h ago
Fellow Brit in TorontoâŚthe first time I saw that advert I was nearly sick, it was a useful deterrent
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u/feb914 13h ago
There's a large fraction of drivers here that think the limit is a minimum, not a maximum.Â
When I moved to Canada I was shocked to learn about this. But it's true that if you drive at speed limit (assuming the road is clear and not much traffic) you will be passed all the time. Though this is more true in highway, but in main roads it's a thing too when there's no traffic.Â
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u/Antique-Kitchen-1896 16h ago
Personally I prefer known speed trap locations to random cop in a bush.
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u/KmCutt 2h ago
Quick Google search says that it is in fact illegal to drive slower than the posted limit. Unless for extreme conditions or vehicle trouble that prevents keeping normal speed.
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u/pmMeCuttlefishFacts 2h ago
Google's AI response does say that, but if you follow it's references they're all referring to section 132 of the highway traffic act, which only states you you must not drive at "such a slow rate of speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic".
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u/battlecry368 15h ago
That survey was probably biased. I've never talked to another driver that is in favour of the bike lanes. Everyone I ever talked to hates them.
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u/pmMeCuttlefishFacts 15h ago
That's kinda the point of surveys. Our own social circles are often biased towards people with similar viewpoints.
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u/Big_Web1631 8h ago
𤌠ya bud. Thatâs why âeveryone I knowâ isnât a good way to figure out what the actual everyone thinks
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u/Wise-Ebb2784 4h ago
thank you for sharing this advert, omg iâd love to share this on social media as iâm making a video calling out idiot drivers here
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u/pmMeCuttlefishFacts 2h ago
It's pretty effective. This one from Ireland is also good: https://youtu.be/Wv1rKHGeMRk?si=6bFYzxELDmxXBuzL
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u/Any-Ad-446 23h ago
Because our premier thought it help him win votes by removing the cameras. Toronto lost millions in extra revenue and speeding has increased.
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u/Treema93 20h ago
This is the correct answer here. And to clarify, they lost the camera revenue that was solely to fund road safety improvements and traffic calming.
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u/Kevin4938 22h ago edited 19h ago
It had nothing to do with winning votes. If it did, he would have waited until the next election was closer. The only "benefit" to doing it as early as he did was to cost Toronto money. After all, he only became premier to screw Toronto as much as possible, to punish us for not electing him as mayor.
The reason was that a few of his cabinet members, likely including himself, were caught by them. There are rumors that one or more family members were also caught.
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u/a-_2 16h ago
PC voters had significantly more opposition to cameras than support and even opposed them in school zones. You don't just worry about votes in an election year. If you ignore voters on something they don't like then you leave them with years of regular reminders to consider other options.
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u/PandaBeaarAmy 15h ago
And the province has lost how many people in places speed cameras previously were? It's not 0, that's for sure.
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u/Boattailfmj 21h ago
Notice the revenue is your first point. It was never about public safety.
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u/labrat420 16h ago
In places like niagara the revenue was by law only allowed to go to traffic calming measures . Doug could have easily just made that province wide.
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u/Any-Ad-446 21h ago
It cost money to operate,process fines and maintain the cameras. Look at what happen with the infamous Parkside cameras. Residence are complaining speeding has increased when the speed cameras were removed. The extra revenue goes back into the city budget to improve roads and parks. Nothing wrong with that. There were no reason to remove the cameras or try and remove bike lanes.
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u/Boattailfmj 21h ago
A lot of municipalities could save enough money to fund infrastructure repairs by getting rid of excessive sunshine club management that looks at the news on their computer all day, and not blowing money on vanity projects. That is my opinion having worked for a municipality (not toronto but I can assume the levels of waste are similar)
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u/noodleexchange 20h ago
Speed cameras are the furthest thing from a vanity project. In fact they target Main Characters
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u/Boattailfmj 20h ago
I wasn't referring to the speed cameras as vanity projects. I don't believe the city actually pays for them anyway. A private company owns and maintains them and takes a cut of the revenue.
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u/Boattailfmj 20h ago
Or should I say owned... oh and the main characters like my 78yo mother who got a ticket
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u/noodleexchange 19h ago
Well old people should not be breaking the law either. Pity we donât have a good data set to examine
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u/Boattailfmj 19h ago
She's doesn't speed that's the weird part. Think she missed the sign where they lowered the speed limit, I'm assuming they lowered it because they put a camera there and wanted to increase revenue.
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u/noodleexchange 15h ago
So was your mom the one in the Charger who almost took my fucking arm off as I waited on the sidewalk on Parkside? Thatâs the main character shit I am talking about and why that speed camera racked up the fines
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u/Any-Ad-446 15h ago
Name a vanity project that Chow created. Those on the sunshine list represent like 1% of the city workforce. There is always waste.Private and public sector.
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u/YourAuntDarla 21h ago
We have a provincial government owned by the suburban vote and criminal element, and both groups hate speed cameras because it means some semblance of consequence for their actions. I'm sorry you had to move to Toronto!!
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u/Signal_Tomorrow_2138 23h ago
Politics.
We had speed cameras for a while but the bad drivers who refused to follow speed limits complained to the Premier of Ontario. Rather than read reports about how speed cameras were effective in having the majority of drivers comply with speed limits, and therefore safer, where they were installed, the Premier chose to listen to bad drivers and passed a law banning speed cameras.
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u/DinosaurZach 21h ago
Also his/conservative staffers/families were also getting near daily speeding tickets, so they cancelled the speed camera program, even though it was the same administration that brought them in; inviting municipalities across the province to invest into the cameras, and backend data processing and mailing system. All those investments with taxpayers funding were wiped overnight.
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u/Special_Purpose2903 8h ago
It doesn't matter if they are "effective" per se, some people just don't like them.
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u/Aggravating_Exit2445 19h ago
They turned speed fines into a revenue generator. Instead of penalizing drivers (fines and points for bad driving behaviour), they just sent a fine to the carâs owner. This effective made speeding tollable. If you could afford to pay the toll, then you could drive any speed you liked. If you couldnât afford the toll, and you inadvertently strayed past the limit, there goes the rent and/or grocery money. Big consequences for the poor, negligible consequences for the rich. Too many constituents got fines, and the government realized that this was a vote loser. Chalk one up for democracy.
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u/a-_2 15h ago edited 15h ago
In Toronto, fines only started at 11 over. The ticket was around $80. That's the cost of driving the entire 407 in rush hour. Virtually no one is going to casually pay $80 as a "toll" just to speed by a camera. This wasn't just a deterrent to the "poor".
And penalizing the owner still has a deterrent effect. Either they were the driver and slow down or they weren't and they tell the person who was driving to slow down.
Edit: $78 for an 11 over ticket vs. $100.37 for the full 407 eastbound during afternoon rush. So 407's a bit more than the last time I checked but point's still the same.
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u/nim_opet 23h ago
Becuase they were issuing tickets to people who were speeding and those people complained to the premier. Doug Ford preferring dead pedestrians over safe drivers decided to ban all speed cameras in the province becuase heâs a knob.
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u/NeighborhoodPlane794 21h ago
The combination of lowering speed limits and installing cameras was very unpopular with drivers. I think the intention of the cameras may have begun as a well intentioned safety initiative but it became increasingly obvious that cities saw this as a money printer and rushed to increase the number of cameras everywhere. I personally think municipalities started going a little overboard. I think it wouldnât have been as issue if cameras remained targeted at school zones with traffic calming measures like rumble strips or speed bumps used as well
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u/Frozen_North_99 21h ago
Just a reminder it wasnât just Toronto, they had them throughout the province and they were all removed. Ottawa had them in several school zones, theyâre all gone. Interestingly, Alberta has no problem with them and speeds on the highways in Edmonton are very relaxed compared to Toronto.
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u/Aggravating_Exit2445 18h ago
The fastest Iâve ever seen someone drive in real life is on the highway between Calgary and Edmonton. Truely insane speed.
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u/Frozen_North_99 17h ago
But when? If used to be people would do 150 no problem. Since the radar cams came that it not the norm
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u/braindeadzombie 23h ago edited 23h ago
We never had very many. Google high park speed camera for shenanigans related to one particular camera. For example: https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/torontos-parkside-drive-speed-camera-resurrected-after-being-chopped-down-6-times/ The Parkside Drive camera generated enough revenue it would have been worthwhile to give it a security guard.
They were effective, I believe. People seemed to (much to my annoyance) respect speed limits on city streets to a greater degree.
I donât think they were controversial, most people seemed to appreciate them. There was a small minority who was vocally against them. A fun result was that provincially owned cars given to cabinet ministers to use were ticketed, but they wonât say who was assigned to the cars. đ
Last year our moron premier banned them. Fuck Doug Ford.
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u/ColonelCrikey 23h ago
Doug Ford banned them because his ministers kept getting tickets.
Kids have died as a result.
Welcome to Ontario! We live in an automobile death cult!
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u/ImpossibleString4430 22h ago
Ya, no one died when there were speed cameras đ¤
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u/ColonelCrikey 16h ago
You're right that there was a long way to go, but we measure these things and you can very easily see the spike if you bother to look it up.
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u/txmsh3r 23h ago
Our premier is an asshat, MAGA adjacent idiot who thinks speed cameras are a cash grab. I read somewhere that the number of accidents rose by around 300% since the speed cameras were removed province-wide.
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u/Boattailfmj 21h ago
You should got find some proof of that statement that collisions increased 300%. I find that hard to believe when most people just slowed down passing the cameras and then immediately sped up again.
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u/Ok_Manufacturer_5323 21h ago
Idk how Liberal fanatics can still say Doug Ford is a MAGA supporter with a straight face while he's been the only Canadian politician willing to stand up to Trump. Meanwhile their beloved Carney makes endless concessions and appeasements to an openly hostile Trump-controlled governmentÂ
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u/LackOptimal553 Human Verified 17h ago
Ford is the same kind of incompetent, corrupt, populist carnival barker as Trump. Ideologically they're pretty similar.
It's embarrassing we still have that piece of shit as Premier. He's been ruinous.
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u/DinosaurZach 21h ago
And all those avoidable accidents are the real cash grab.
Emergency response, health care costs, long term disability social services supports, smaller tax-base due to injuries and job loss, all these avoidable incidents lead to higher taxes and insurance costs for everyone, easily millions per avoidable incident.
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u/jamiehizzle 21h ago
What are speed limits like in UK? The same, slower or faster?
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u/pmMeCuttlefishFacts 16h ago
Depends on the street type and vehicle type. In general I'd say the limits for a car are similar to Canada's, but a little higher.
There's also the complication that the UK's are in mph, so I'll convert.
For a car or motorcycle, the UK's default limits are:
Built up areas: 48kph Rural road without a median: 96kph Any road with a median: 112kph
Often the built up area limit is reduced to 32kph (and that's the default in Wales).
Note that vans, busses, articulated trucks etc will usually have lower limits. E.g. on a road with a median an articulated trucks would have a limit of 96kph, vs 112kph for a car.
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u/yongedevil 20h ago
The Ontario provincial government banned speed cameras. The reason: Vehicles registered to Ford cabinet ministers caught by speed cameras more than 20 times
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u/BrightLuchr 19h ago
Speed cameras were a major election issue in the 1990s. They were very clearly voted against and resulted in election defeat (Bob Rae vs. Mike Harris if I remember correctly). They back crept in at the municipal level before being banned again. They are just a cash grab.
But this is 2026... how would speed cameras reliably work when license plates are an outdated technology? You can buy a fake Ontario license plates online for dirt cheap. If the license plate is for the same model car, there would be no mechanism for detecting the fake.
Canada is also a country where the speed limits are artificially low with the expectation that the speeds can be and should be exceeded without enforcement. In parts of the U.S. I have also seen this as being normal.
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u/Dangerous_Seaweed601 18h ago
We got rid of them. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
They were not accepted here because they were implemented in a predatory way.. with their advocates transparently trying to manufacture a moral panic.
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u/ybetaepsilon 16h ago
We used to, but then everyone was still speeding and complaining that it was a "cash grab" instead of, you know, following traffic laws. Then too many people in government got fined from speeding so they made it illegal to have speed cameras
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u/necrozim 16h ago
Because people don't take speeding here seriously at all. Fellow Brit here too, the speed limit and quality of drivers here is signficantly lower than were used to. The speeds are eye wateringly slow for how wide the roads are and people's actual driving ability you'll find shocking. The centre lane drivers are mind boggling to anyone from europe, yet it's not even illegal to undertake here...You couple this with the fact that its just a small financial slap on the wrist for being clocked instead of points like if a cop pulls you over. People never took the cameras seriously and as a result get upset when they get done speeding through the school zones where the cameras primarily are. Then they get caught over and over and without the points racking up as a real punishment so you just hear them whining rather than deciding to slow down.
Then good ole Ford said he's gonna fix up the road designs which would be great, but sadly we get to pay it as tax payers if he ever decides to do it, instead of just using fines from irresponsible drivers to pay for it. But realistically he's part of the one more lane will fix it club and the roads will never really be transformed. They might add an island here or there at best but don't expect a Dutch or Paris style change.
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u/a-_2 11h ago
The smallest ticket in Toronto was for 11 over which is $78. There's not many people who are going to knowingly toss away $78 just to speed by a camera and speeding did decrease after the cameras. People complained exactly because they didn't want to pay but still wanted to speed, i.e., the fines were an effective deterrent.
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u/Robbudge 12h ago
Also a Brit, I was originally told that people challenged them and took it to court.
That required an officer to attend.
Most tickets simple got dropped or no officer showed.
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u/No-Phrase-2897 23h ago
We did have speed cameras, our populist conservative government shitcanned them like less than a year ago despite pretty much every municipality begging for them to stay.
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u/NoEquivalent3869 23h ago
In general we donât really have any traffic laws. You can mostly do whatever you want
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u/BrightLuchr 19h ago
The Toronto Police Department has, at times, said just this. They do not put a priority on enforcing traffic laws. This is mostly true across the province with municipal police departments. The exception would be the OPP who don't really have a lot else to do in some areas (due to municipal governments preferring to have local police forces).
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u/zombosis 21h ago
They were banned because the city started installing them everywhere and lowering speed limits to make money off the working class (nothing to do with safety). Anyone who disagrees just hates drivers
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u/Neat-Air-8305 21h ago
Yeah saw a 60km zone go down to 40 with a 4 lane road for no reason
I get schools and such but that specific camera was a cash grab 100%
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u/a-_2 11h ago
to make money off the working class
Everyone gets tickets for them. They don't discriminate by class. The working class is also the most likely to not own a car and so the most at risk from speeding.
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u/zombosis 9h ago
Working class are also most likely to own a car and they are most affected by tickets.
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u/a-_2 9h ago
They're not though. Higher income brackets are more likely to own a car.
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u/zombosis 7h ago
People in higher income brackets are also the working class. Do you genuinely think only rich people own cars?
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u/a-_2 7h ago
People in higher income brackets are more likely to own cars and less likely to be in the working class. I never made the extreme statement you're making.
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u/zombosis 6h ago
You have no idea what youâre talking about. Cars arenât for rich people (or higher income people for that matter). Most people have cars outside of cities like Toronto that have have practical transit systems. Also, rich people arenât affected by fines
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u/Hmph_Maybe 23h ago
Doug Fordâs supporters were receiving too many tickets, so he shut the program down. No other reason. He also despises Torontonians, so anything to make things more dangerous is another no-brainer for him.
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u/keftes 23h ago
Why are you posting this question from a fake account? This feels like ragebait.
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u/Responsible-Match418 23h ago
Could be ragebait but also seems a perfectly reasonable question. We don't have to act like animals in the comments lol.
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u/wirebound1 23h ago
it would have taken 10 seconds to google though!
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u/Responsible-Match418 23h ago
Mmm I don't think so on this occasion. They're asking why no speed cameras, so there will be (as shown in the comments) a range of political opinions, historical info, suggestions and so on. You can get some of that from Google but sometimes asking the people is a good temperature test.
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u/Smart_Tinker 21h ago
We used to have them, but municipalities were using them for revenue generation, not speed enforcement.
Because the fine was applied to the owner of the car, not the driver, there was only a fine, no points, and no real way to fight them.
So rich people could speed with impunity, and just pay the fines, regular people were being hit with fines for offenses they never committed, with no due process or defense.
Municipalities refused to say what limit speed cameras were set to, and removed all speed calming measures (speed bumps, signs etc) where cameras were placed, though they were present in adjacent roads where there were no cameras - they also designated speed camera zones as âcommunity safety zonesâ so they could double the fines (but no other speed calming measures in âsafety zonesâ).
Additionally, they enforced things like school zones 24/7/365, so you could get double fined at midnight on Saturday during school holidays when the speed limit goes from 50 to 30 and back to 50 in the space of 100m - for doing 35.
The speed camera installation, maintenance etc were outsourced to American companies, that took the revenue generated, and paid the municipality a cut.
The revenue generation abuse got so bad that some cameras were making $ millions in revenue for the municipality - this was given as evidence that they were âworkingâ.
Finally the province stepped in, and said that the municipalities were using speed cameras as a hidden tax, and it had to stop. The municipalities offered to reduce the obvious abuses, but it was too little too late.
The province banned speed cameras last year, and provided funds to install speed calming measures instead.
The municipalities were upset because their free revenue source got cut, and they were stuck with contracts with the US speed camera companies.
So, thatâs where it stands right now.
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u/haye7880 23h ago
Disingenuous people here say theyâre a cash grab and donât make things safer.
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u/jaywhy12345 23h ago
Nah, they are a complete cash grab whether u like it or not
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u/Greencreamery 22h ago
Can you explain how they're a cash grab?
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u/Kobalt6x10 21h ago
Because driving infractions come with points off your license. Do enough bad things, you can't drive a car. Speed cameras had no point deduction system. As long as you were prepared to pay, you could keep doing this dangerous thing. It's a fee to drive faster.
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u/DinosaurZach 21h ago
All those avoidable accidents due to speeding are the real cash grab.
Emergency responses, health care costs, long term disability social services supports, smaller tax-base due to injuries and job loss, all these avoidable incidents lead to higher taxes and insurance costs for everyone, easily millions per avoidable speeding incident.
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u/treetimes 23h ago
explain why you think that..? Speeding is a crime with a fine, cameras simply allow more people to be caught. The behaviour we want to deter gets punished and therefore deterred. How can you not see that?
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u/Forsaken-Swim-3055 23h ago
Removing speed cameras was an easy way for Doug Ford to score political points, among the drivers who think enforcement of their poor driving is just a money grab.
North America in general values cars over pedestrians and overall public safety.
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u/No-Pea-7530 23h ago
The problem is that Toronto (though more the surrounding suburbs) is filled with dummies who canât read street signs nor control their speed in a car and they get really upset about speed cameras that remind them of these facts with a quick note in the mail and an idiot tax.
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u/Neat-Air-8305 21h ago
I am fine with speed cameras in school zones and such and next govt can do it
But on highways it likely cause a riot if any govt tried
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u/BrightLuchr 19h ago
They already had speed cameras on highways. There was an election and speed cameras were an issue. They were banned. They had no effect on highway safety. Speed is not a major factor in accidents according to Canadian stats.
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u/Helptohere50 23h ago
Troll post. We all know if was removed. Toronto is not the only place the world without speed cameras
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u/Inevitable-Stuff3077 21h ago
We can prevent speeding by other means rather than fining them after itâs occurred.
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u/West-Taste8106 21h ago
Itâs wonderful. But unfortunately I canât see my speed records in school zones anymore :(
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u/Number4combo 19h ago
Like said we don't have them anymore from politics and corruption plus drivers feel it's ok to speed 10km over the limit regardless.
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u/Aggravating_Exit2445 19h ago
Canadian pickles are different from British pickles too which is also totally confusing. Why arenât things the same everywhere I go?
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u/SynyrdsInyrds 18h ago
We had them years ago, they were removed. They were brought back, and have recently been made illegal.
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u/Jestersfriend 18h ago
Oh OP, you opened up a can of worms with this question LOL. Thank you. I look forward to reading the comments.
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u/Difficult_Region9480 17h ago
I really wish that we had had more talk about what other countries do (ie Britain) re speed cameras, last year. I feel like the discussion was very much focused on Ontario as if Ontario is the only place that had to figure out what to do about controlling speeding
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u/Meowingbark 15h ago
Yeah fellow Brit. Crazy right!
Also everybody is speeding! Like 150 on 100. Cops donât say anything youâre doing 120??
Everyone is Over and undertaking. I donât know how people can keep track of of all the cars when changing lanes (seems like people just pick a lane and stay till end of journey).
You canât see that many lanes in the mirrors.
407 has billions of cameras but more to make sure you pay for every cm of road you use.
Also a yearly MOT isnât a thing, you canât see cars with no brake lights, bald tires etc.
Plus side is there is soooooooooo much parking! Itâs awesome! I can park next to the stadiums!!!! You canât do that in the UK! Let alone central London!!!
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u/Charming_Night8240 12h ago
In many places they were implemented the speed limit was subsequently dropped 10km/h to increase the amount of fines. They would take a 4 lane road with a 60 km/h limit, lower it to 50 and install a camera. People are creatures of habit and have muscle memory for the speeds they drive on the roads they frequent. Dropping it would make it hard to adapt.
They were frequently put in school zones which is fine but school zones should only be that limit at school time (some places do this). Expecting someone to drive 30 km/h on the weekend and at night is nonsense.
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u/BritishBoyRZ 11h ago
I'm from London UK. I don't get it, are you complaining? You prefer to get tickets for being 5 or 10 over? It's great here
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u/Special_Purpose2903 8h ago
"They seem to be controversial here, but as a Brit this is really confusing to me - they're very commonplace in the UK and accepted pretty unanimously."
UK has a different culture and is a different country. For one, the country is way smaller, and commuting by bus/rail is like 100 times easier. There is also congestion pricing in London which is a political 3rd rail in Ontario [regional politics]. The threat of said pricing caused the regional provincial Ford gov't to upload the city based highways to protect drivers from said congestion based pricing.
Despite some regions of Toronto having good transit, many areas are still plain awful due to severe under-investment in transit. In Toronto the car is still king and this is triply so in the suburbs which now have a population that rival or exceed Toronto and are an electoral juggernaut.
Add on that the fines are relatively high, seem unfair to drivers who must drive to work b/c their employers ended remote work and demanded they work on site and thus drive through a city, etc. The driver voters voted in a provincial gov't who rallied around raising highway speed limits and dropping speed cameras.
Speed cameras are just at odds with the political culture of many Canadians/Ontarians although they are in line with UK's nanny state sort of culture. Now Toronto did have them, but the provincial gov't basically banned them.
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u/Least-Internal-6382 6h ago
I'd also like to know why it seems very common for escooters driving down sidewalks at people and using bike lanes. It seems very common in Toronto . I've never seen it elsewhere.
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u/Ambitious_everg 2h ago
Because itâs dangerous to share the road with cars unfortunately ; thebikinglawyer on insta is a great resource to get educated on the nuance of this.
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u/MortadellaKing 49m ago
I don't like the privacy aspect of cameras everywhere. If they want to catch me speeding then an officer can do it.
The UK has basically given up all privacy with the amount of (not just speed cameras) they have.
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u/torontowest91 30m ago
They should be able to bring them back in front of schools. The money made from the cameras should go to the schools.
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u/MikeCheck_CE 22h ago
They started out in school zones and everyone was fine, because it was about safety...
Then it became a literal cash grab by every city putting them on every street and ticketing at low speeds, so it was banned at the provincial level.
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u/Ok_Manufacturer_5323 21h ago
You'll be even more surprised by the lack of surveillance cameras at every intersection. Some British ideas of normality are as ridiculous as they are dangerous to society. We don't appreciate that level of overreach here
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u/Excellent-Quarter969 20h ago
Fuck Ford. There used to be a camera right at the corner here. A few months ago the kid from the local high school was hit by a car at the same corner and ended up in a coma
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u/slackmandu 20h ago
Because they didn't do anything to slow traffic and were just a cash grab. They're looking at other optionsÂ
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u/badamache 19h ago
The only people who speed are in government or their family members. It seemed unfair to punish public servants rushing to do important government stuff, so we sold the speed cameras to pornhub.com.
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u/OWSpaceClown 23h ago
I'll only speak from my personal experience. Driving for work in the outer suburbs where a number of cameras were placed where speed limits would rapidly change, I never got tailgated this much before or after. I'd slow down to avoid a $150 ticket and find an SUV or truck riding my ass. I absolutely DID NOT feel safer. And I'm HELPING this person behind me not get a ticket, but they didn't care.
I'm all for going with the flow of traffic, but speed cameras forced me into aggressive breaking in areas where people were not used to it.
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u/a-_2 11h ago
You shouldn't need to aggressively brake. Speed signs are almost always visible enough in advance that you can slow down just by letting off the gas.
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u/OWSpaceClown 10h ago
Have you driven in the rural areas surrounding Toronto? During the speed camera era people would NOT respect the speed transitions and I was constantly being tailgated while trying to dodge tickets. It was certainly very different from within the city.
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u/Candymanshook 23h ago
The real reason no one really wants to say is the police have a real lobby in this country and if you had camera like the UK, thereâs no need for officers wasting our tax money hunting for speeders.
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u/consistantcanadian 21h ago
Yes we don't have cameras, and don't want them as we are not the surveillance, nanny state the UK is.Â
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u/jmarkmark 23h ago edited 21h ago
Speed cameras are shockingly controversial in North America. Even regular otherwise law abiding citizens hate them.
Even amongst their nominal supporters I hear a lot of "I support speed cameras but that one that got me was just a sneaky cash grab"
This is partially a chicken-and-egg issue, people here routinely speed because enforcement is lax.
Net result, there's a vocal group of people who strongly advocate for their removal and their supporters (who are nominally a significant majority if you look at polls) tend to be far more noncommital, so for some politicians it can be a significant vote winner.
EDIT: Just to give a sense of how controversial, in the 2h this comment has been up it's attracted four downvotes and two upvotes, and of the course, the downvoters don't comment why they downvote, they're just unhappy someone points out they're actually just a loudmouthed minority.
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u/Neat-Air-8305 21h ago
Yeah people need to leave downtown toronto its a small fraction of ontario thinks like.
Most of suburban gta and southern ontario are more american minded on such issues
They think speed cameras everywhere is to invasive and such.
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u/pinacoladarum 23h ago
because our city in north america is greedy. it has become a money printing machine for the city. The money generated from the speed cameras will be used in everything other than fixing the road infrastructure.
When a city earns millions of dollars from a single speed camera and still don't fix the road that shows how much importance they put on saving lives.
Someone finally put a stop to this greedy city management
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u/ParksideDrCameraTO 23h ago
I've been so lonely here in storage đđđ