Drivers of city vehicles don’t pay red-light camera tickets
‘The city pays all fines due on these tickets as the vehicle owner’
Thousands of drivers in Hamilton receive a notice in the mail from the city each year with a ticket from a red-light camera or a photo-radar camera inside. It’s always an unwelcome little surprise.
But what happens if a city employee driving a city vehicle is one of those. Do they have to pay the ticket?
“No, they do not pay that amount,” says manager of fleet, Tom Kagianis.
There is an internal discipline process so the drivers don’t get off scot-free. Still, it doesn’t exactly sound fair that a municipal worker doesn’t have to pay a ticket that would cost you $325 or more.
Here’s the situation. In the case of both photo-radar and red-light cameras, the ticket never goes to the driver — it’s often impossible to prove who was behind the wheel — but rather to the owner. In this case, any ticket would be mailed by the city to the city.
With 930 city vehicles on the streets, it does happen. Ten times already this year.
I write in my other life about the auto industry. I write about topics that involve pedestrians and cyclists; road use and how undemocratic it is. Recent pedestrian fatalities on Hamilton’s roads have left me as gutted as many of you — maybe even more.
There is no such thing as an accident when we’re talking about vehicles. Every collision, with an infinitesimal number of exceptions, could be avoided. Unless a driver experiences a catastrophic medical event or a meteor, or there is a mechanical failure (far rarer than you imagine), they have to be in control of what they are driving at all times. “He came out of nowhere!” “The car went out of control!” “I didn’t see it until it was too late!” Hogwash.
There is a pecking order on our streets, and those afoot are the most vulnerable. They are at the bottom. Those piloting oversized vehicles they can’t see out of are near the top, barely behind the impaired and distracted, and too often in some combination. Municipalities pay lip service to programs like Vision Zero (no more deaths on our city streets), but they fail in most places in North America because we are selfish and arrogant. Drivers value their right to drive above other road users right to remain alive and uninjured. And we let them.
We lower speed limits, but without strict enforcement, it means little. I was once against speed cameras; no longer. Blanket the city with them if it means forcing drivers to slow down. Your right to drive as fast as you want will never, ever supersede the right of other road users to not be hit by you.
Sales of ever-larger pickup trucks and SUVs dominate the marketplace. Manufacturers don’t make nearly the profit on smaller cars they do on massive vehicles. If your work requires a truck, you need a truck, but we are seeing an alarming increase in people advertised into believing they, too, need to be supersized. Those higher hood and bumper heights are killing people. If you get hit by a Civic, it’s designed to let you roll over the hood. Not ideal, but far better than getting creamed by a driver in a behemoth who never saw you in the first place.
Remember telling your kids to make eye contact with a driver
before they stepped off a curb? Good luck with that today. From the ous insane tinting, heights it’s impossible. to the ubiquitt
But it should never be up to the pedestrian to make sure a driver sees them. You are driving something that can kill people in a heartbeat; it is on you to make sure you’re paying full attention to only driving, to drive slowly enough to stop if you have to, and to not drive at all if you find it too dark, or too rainy, or too slippery.
Pedestrians shouldn’t jaywalk; pedestrians often have their noses in their phones; pedestrians don’t wear reflective clothing. I don’t care. Drivers run red lights, they speed, they have their noses in their phones, and worst of all, they somehow think their dominance is their right. And people die. They’re not safe in crosswalks and they’re not safe on sidewalks. That is on drivers. Those safety ratings manufacturers boast about are true. Cars have never been safer, and those high, heavy ones are the safest of all. But only for the people inside them. They can be a menace, and cities have to stop putting motorists ahead of vulnerable road users. If 10 people are in a room and one has a loaded gun, is it really up to the other nine to make sure they don’t get shot?
There is no way our roads will get safer until we shift the paradigm. Protecting vulnerable road users needs to dominate all planning.