City may have to seek higher fines to target repeat speeders, Tory warns

Torontosun.com
Sept. 9, 2022
Antonella Artuso

Toronto may have to seek tougher fines for speeding as photo radar keeps snapping images of the same lead-footed motorists, Mayor John Tory says.

Two drivers managed to get 10 tickets each in June after blowing past the same photo radar machines repeatedly.

“I can’t imagine the people that have been getting a ticket for several hundred dollars but then go ahead and get four or five more in the same place,” Tory said Tuesday. “You sort of wonder about whether you should be questioning the rightness of their having a driver’s license ... That behaviour simply has to change.”

While errant drivers must pay fines set by the province, including a victim fine surcharge, if nabbed by the Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) program, no demerit points are issued.

There may be a need to increase those fines to ensure drivers don’t simply write off the tickets as the cost of speeding, said the mayor.

Traditional enforcement with police manning radar guns continues, and resources for traffic safety have grown, however officers still have many other responsibilities, he said.

“I think the speed cameras are a more effective way of doing this,” Tory said.

Toronto’s 50 photo radar machines catch tens of thousands of drivers every couple of months, many of them repeat offenders.

Tory said he asked former premier Kathleen Wynne for provincial permission to install the speed cameras because he felt they were a necessary tool, in addition to other Vision Zero Road Safety measures like the introduction of school zones and redesigned intersections.

“This program is going to be much more effective when individual people who are driving vehicles -- whether it be trucks or cars -- decide that they’re going to follow the law, that they’re going to change their own behaviour,” Tory said. “It’s one thing to put speed cameras in place and have them issue 43,000 tickets... but what are we going to do to change that behaviour?”