Kids are alright, photo radar isn’t

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/04/2015 (3834 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Right up front I admit kids are great. They’re fantastic. They’re super.

I have two of my own and love them to bits. They are fun to have around when they’re not draping their socks on the living room coffee table or leaving every light on in the house or taking a shower for an hour.

I would be absolutely devastated if either of them was hit by a car. I’d be emotionally crushed if they were hurt on their way to or from school. I’d be outraged if they were injured by a speeding driver or someone too busy texting to pay attention to the road.

I also confess that I am among the more than 21,000 people who’ve been dinged speeding through one of the city’s 300 new 30 km/h speed limit school zones.

A photo radar van tagged me on St. Matthews across from Greenway School about three months ago. I was going about 42 km/h an hour and had to pay a $207.75 fine. It was just before 10 a.m. on a weekday.

It was the second of two photo radar tickets I’ve got since photo enforcement was introduced in Winnipeg in 2003.

Yes, only two. Yay me.

But in the words of our former mayor Glen Murray, I’m an idiot and a lawbreaker.

"To get a ticket, you have to be a complete idiot. This is a tax on idiots," his worship said Oct. 15, 2001 before intersection photo enforcement and mobile photo radar was rolled out.

"If you persist in breaking the law, you will be fined," Murray added. "You’re almost asking for it."

But I’m not the only idiot and lawbreaker in this city. I have lots of company. Fine revenue from photo enforcement was a record $14.6 million in 2014, up from $11.6 million in 2013.

That’s a lot of lawbreakers. That’s a lot of idiots.

You people should all be ashamed. Tsk, tsk.

Now, I’ve followed the evolution of photo enforcement since its inception. According to the Freep’s electronic story morgue, I’ve filed about 200 stories on the subject.

Yay me.

My most recent had to do with the more than 21,000 speeding tickets churned out by photo radar in our new 30 km/h speed school zones. 

As soon as the story saw the light of day Len Eastoe and I were condemned for criticizing police and not caring about the protection of children.

We were booed off the page for essentially supporting idiots and lawbreakers to speed through school zones.

Heck, it became like if you don’t support the 30 km/h speed limit in school zones you must support the child pornographers.

Groan.

Here’s the deal: When photo enforcement was brought in the Doer government imposed some rules on where the mobile cameras could go. Simply, the NDP told police how to do their jobs.

In their wisdom the government told police that the mobile cameras could only set up in school zones, construction zones and near playgrounds.

The cops had wanted the ability to use the cameras where drivers really speed, like on Bishop Grandin and other busy routes, but that police discretion was yanked away by a gun-shy government in re-election mode.

At the same time we were all fed the line that the cameras were all about safety and teaching drivers to just slow down.

This was all back in 2002-03.

What’s happened since then is that we’ve all figured out where the intersection cameras are and until last fall where the 10 mobile photo radar units deployed each day. We all learned how to spot them and we all learned how to just slow down for cameras and then continue on our merry way until slowing down again for the next camera.

Us lawbreakers and idiots got so smart that photo enforcement also just slowed down — churning out less cash for city hall and the province. Yes, the province also gets a cut of the loot. Under the deal, the city splits fine revenue with the province based on a scale; the higher the ticket, the more the city gets.

With less fine revenue city hall was in a pickle.

What to do? What to do?

Think, think, think.

Police, the city and the province came up with some solutions to reverse that downward slide in revenue.

Improve the technology to digital from wet film to be more productive and faster. Pursue more aggressive speed enforcement in construction zones, and. . .

Yup, you guessed it! Yay you! Bring in a 30 km/h speed limit in school zones. But just elementary schools. To heck with those high-school kids! The zones were OK’d by the province last year at the city’s request.

Winnipeggers were sold on the 30 km/h speed limit because Winnipeg was the only city in Western Canada that didn’t have a school-zone speed limit. If it’s good enough for Saskatoon, it must be good enough for us.

So the speed limit was imposed last fall with barely a whimper in protest. It was all about saving the children, right? Who’d have the temerity on city council or the legislative assembly to question it?

To this day, there is no evidence to suggest these new reduced speed-limit school zones were danger zones for kids in the first place. The Winnipeg Police Service, Manitoba Public Insurance and the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority do not keep track of child injuries or fatalities in school zones.

There is nothing to show that walking home from school on a Tuesday is any more dangerous than crossing a street to play at a friend’s house on a Tuesday night.  

We do know based on common sense that a child will suffer less severe injuries when stuck by a slower moving vehicle than one traveling faster.

We also have some knowledge that an unsupervised child is at greater risk of being hit by a car. 

But we also know that the mobile photo radar cameras have spewed out more than 21,000 tickets since October in the new 30 km/h speed limit school zones. We also know that number is partly behind the record windfall of fine revenue in 2014. 

The point is, police have not increased enforcement. They still have the 10 mobile photo radar units they’ve always had.

They just moved them.

They just moved them from where they used to be deployed, the places the province said they could only set up, to the 300 new 30 km/h speed limit school zones.

Are any of those original locations decreed by the provincial government any safer now that photo radar has moved on? Are there any less speeders?

Of course not. People still drive past these locations they same way they always have. It’s just that now there’s no camera to catch the odd speeder.

The cameras have moved to where it’s more lucrative, to pick off all of us idiots and lawbreakers in reduced-speed school zones. 

Safety, schmafety.

The cameras have become just money boxes for the city and province.