Ben Bull, Columnist –
Someone is knocking down the cameras! Apparently, 20 speed cameras have been vandalized in Toronto so far this month.
That is one angry motorist…
Or maybe it’s a gang. Maybe one miffed motorist got a ticket and sent a WhatsApp message to another miffed motorist, and pretty soon they had themselves a posse. And they rode out, well drove out – slowly I expect, since there’s nothing worse than getting another ticket – and started taking out the cameras.
I’m not sure how the speed cameras were incapacitated exactly, but judging by one photo I saw, they won’t be snapping any pictures for a while.
I’m not a big fan of speed cameras. I dislike speeding motorists more, but I’m not sure the cameras do all that much to prevent errant driving. I blame the roads.
I remember zipping across the Bloor Viaduct a few years ago, spreading myself out in my seat as I settled into the wide, empty lane, staring at the vast expanse of uninterrupted road ahead, until …
What’s this? Ah, crap.
I think a hook in the mouth might be preferable to being waved to the side of the road and admonished like a teenager for doing something you’ve very obviously been tricked into doing.
My mum used to put a plate of cakes in the fridge before dinner whenever we had guests.
“Don’t eat them!” she’d snap, before slamming the fridge door shut and marching away.
What is she doing? I’d wonder, as the smell wafted through the house. I can’t handle this.
I’d look around and realize I was alone. Then I’d open up the fridge and ask myself:
Did she count them…?
Inevitably I’d carefully carve out a corner of a battenberg or scrape off a thin layer of icing from the Vanilla Slice.
She’ll never notice this, I’d tell myself. But she did.
Temptation is a test, one I find very hard to pass.
In Ottawa on the weekend, I noticed that some residential streets have metal bollards bolted into the asphalt every hundred feet or so. The bollards make the road slimmer and force cars to slow down as they sidle through. The road signs are also in French, so that slowed me down a little too.
On the drive back we took Highway 7. Unlike the 401, Highway 7 is for the most part a single lane each way. The road goes up and down and left and right, and the scenery is breathtaking. Even when there was no traffic in front of me, I had a hard time speeding.
No point putting a speed camera on that road.
I have yet to be dinged by a speed camera. I’ve been pulled over three times, always going just a little over the limit on a wide empty road.
I’m not opposed to traffic cameras. I just don’t think we should be admonishing people for doing what the road is encouraging us to do.
Instead, why don’t we design our roads to keep us on our toes, and spend our enforcement energy trying to catch people doing what they so very obviously should not be doing.
Like weaving. Not indicating turns. Honking horns for no good reason. Knocking something, or someone, over. Blocking the box. Running a red light.
If any one of us does any of these things, we deserve a ticket and we have no one else to blame.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to those battered stanchions. Perhaps the miffed motorist posse is camped out in the Don Valley canyon waiting for first light so they can head out and flatten some more cameras.
If we are going to right-end them, let’s fix the roads while we’re at it. Make the lanes slimmer, put some curves in to keep it interesting, and, what the hell – let’s add a few French signs.
That should slow us all down.
