CRD to push for cameras despite photo radar no-go
To cut down on crashes, focus should be on ‘worst of speeders’: safety advocate
Traffic-safety advocate Chris Foord says the Capital Regional District will not stop pushing the provincial government to install speed cameras, despite the NDP’s new attorney general ruling out photo radar.
“If we want to cut down on insurance claims, and I think everybody does, to me the most sensible way to do that is to cut down on the number of crashes,” said Foord, vice-chairman of the CRD’s Traffic Safety Commission.
“If crashes on our roads continue to happen … [the government] is going to have to look at automated cameras of some form.”
CRD directors endorsed on July 12 the idea of putting speed cameras on the Malahat, and will ask the Cowichan Valley Regional District for its support in calling on the provincial government to install the cameras.
Foord said the technology of interval-based speed cameras has advanced far beyond the filmbased photo-radar system put in place by a previous NDP government in the 1990s. Under that program, unmarked police vans were strategically parked on B.C. highways with cameras snapping photos of speeding cars. The vehicle’s registered owner would later get a ticket in the mail.
The program was scrapped in 2001 by Gordon Campbell’s B.C. Liberal government.
Attorney General David Eby said Monday that the photo-radar system was unpopular with British Columbians who thought it was unfair.
“One of the problems with photo radar is that you’re unable to, for example, attribute a speeding ticket to the particular driver who was driving the vehicle. So there are a number of challenges with that technology and what we would like to do is ensure a model of fairness and accountability, ” he said.
Eby was speaking Monday in response to a 203-page report by accounting firm Ernst and Young that warned of a financial crisis at ICBC that could lead to a 30 per cent increase in rates by 2019 if nothing is done to reform the system.
Eby said the government should embrace different technologies, such as red-light intersection cameras.
However, Foord said the problem with red-light cameras is that tickets aren’t given to speeders, only drivers who blow through red lights.
Foord said the old photo-radar system was set up to give tickets to anyone going 11 kilometres an hour or more over the limit, which is what made it so unpopular.
“Let’s start by trying to catch the worst of the speeders, who are 25 or 30 [kilometres an hour] over the limit,” Foord said.
In 2015, the B.C. Coroners Service called on the Liberal government to investigate the use of automated cameras after a review of 106 young-driver deaths from 2004 to 2013 found that speed was a factor in nearly 30 per cent of the fatalities.