With the passing of Bill 56, The Government of Ontario has removed authorization for the use of automated speed enforcement cameras from the Highway Traffic Act.

There is an approach that I often attribute to progressives that is punitive. This assumes that people do wrong by default and the established structure should be setup to punish the people. If all goes well, the proceeds of this punishment are used to pay for the high-priced cameras and other stuff. Couple this with, at times, ridiculously low speed limits on some roads, and this punish-at-all costs approach becomes, well, a cost centre for apparently 1,000 jobs in Toronto¹. And look at how many speeders are caught, it’s a such minor fraction of all the drivers on the road.

The point I make is that our western society ought to be based on leniency first. You’re innocent until proven guilty. There are no extenuating circumstances with a robot auto-catching your speed and treating it like an expensive parking ticket. Let’s just automate every error a driver could make, and turn it into a tax, right? Do you know any drivers that have never once made an error on the road?

Which then brings me to an underlying fear for so many. I think of the movie Demolition Man and the government’s Verbal Morality Statute. In that future world, machines are everywhere, listening to everything we say. If someone says a ‘bad’ word, boom, a fine is spit out for some amount of in-world credits. Doubtless, few would accept a world where all crime is robotically caught and perhaps some A.I. judge presides over your conviction and sentencing. It is the human element that undergirds all of what we consider crimes, laws, and how we enforce them².

Too often municipalities are instituting these programs with zero buy-in and even more secrecy. The town of Oshawa, for example, publishes no details about how many speeders they catch, what revenue they earn, and what speed differentials. Some data did trickle out thanks to a freedom of information request, but one can be certain that the Oshawa city council knows its all a bad look.

The value proposition is always “Speed cameras work,” but with that kind of absolute statement speed cameras should have stopped speeding altogether. The fact that people are speeding and still get caught says that the cameras only punish, not stop speeding. What they do is reduce speeding, which is good. This is a worthy goal, but not the only way to approach the problem. Just like a drug, governments get a high when they see the money rolling in. They never want it to stop.

It is the responsibility of the government to work for their constituents, and, gosh, could they once actually only do something if they can get buy-in? Too much of local government is “Hey, we’re doing a bad thing for you, is anyone out there that disagrees?” Of course, when no one engages, they just go ahead. It really would be an inspired approach if they took it as a responsibility to connect with the people. Running cities in apathy is how we got to so many bad places.

But, in all this, speed cameras are deeply, deeply unpopular with Ontarians. Many of these shrouded-in-secrecy automated systems are running afoul with the public for good reason. We are in a democracy, should that not be our guiding star? Also, what could be done with all that unused camera tech?

1. Olivia Chow mentioned this in a speech, and you can be sure the City of Toronto wasn’t providing these details beforehand. ↩︎
2. There are tons of laws that never get updated too. It’s apparently illegal to whistle in Petrolia, Ontario. ↩︎