GuelphToday received the following letter from reader Don Rusk regarding speeding deterrents.
I have to confess, I once got a speeding ticket for speeding past a photo radar van on the 401. After I saw the blue flash I cursed and slowed down. At the time my thinking was that I got a ticket for speeding, because I was speeding. If I had sped past five radar vans and got five tickets it would still have been my fault.
Many people who shared my fate wrote angry letters to media. They believed that because no officer pulled them over it was somehow unfair or a tax grab . But we were speeding .
I recall reading in a Guelph paper about a woman (speeder of the week) who got a ticket for going 100 in a 60 on Stone Road East . When the officer asked her why she was going 100 she said she thought that the speed limit was 80.
There's this idea that if you only break the law a little you shouldn't have consequences because other people do worse things or because you only stepped over the line a little.
We need to stop wasting our money on expensive technology, expensive policing and expensive courts clogged with people who don't want to take responsibility for what they did. How many times have you heard someone say, always fight a ticket, the cop may not show up for court?
What we need is low cost physical barriers that are inexpensive to maintain and will damage your car if you're dumb enough to ignore them. I have a vacation home in Mexico where they don't have Canadian-style crosswalks. The climate is tropical, the trees grow over the signs faster than they can be cut and policing the crosswalks is now unnecessary. The crosswalks there are elevated to curb height. If you disrespect them your car will be airborne. Main streets with higher speed limits have roundabouts surrounded by speed bumps.
Physical barriers are cost effective, they treat everyone the same so they're fair, they don't move so there's no surprises and there's no cop or judge to argue with. It's just you, alone, waiting for a tow truck, thinking how grateful you are that that your insurance company doesn't know how you really drive and if you have any sense, coming to your senses and slowing down.
Don Rusk
