Canada: Speed Camera Tickets Slow Drivers
The city of Edmonton, Canada admitted this week that 158 motorists were ticketed for driving at or below the speed limit on June 21. Because a mobile speed camera unit on the Whitemud Freeway at Rainbow Valley Bridge was set up improperly that day, the city will cancel or refund about $11,000 worth of citations, the Red Deer Advocate reported. The average safe travel and design speed of the Whitemud Freeway is 100km/h (62 MPH), but city officials lowered the limit to 80km/h (50 MPH), making it a favorite location to deploy mobile photo radar traps. On Sunday, June 21, a camera operator set the device’s trigger speed to 70km/h (43 MPH). The tickets were processed, issued and mailed without any verification that the settings were correct. When motorist Matt O’Daly received a $71 ticket in the mail, he remembered that he had not been speeding on that day. After he complained to the Edmonton Police Service, officials were forced to admit the error.
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I'm a transportation engineer, who happens to live in Edmonton and has happened to do some work on Whitemud Drive. Yes the design speed is 100 km/h for the freeway, but there are some older sections that are not set for that speed. In Canada, we design our roads to something called "the 95th percentile speed". This number came from a study completed in the 1980's which looked at the actual travel speed versus signed speeds in the country. As it turns out, the higher standard the road, the higher the difference between the design speed and signed speed depending on road type. For example, an arterial roadway has a design speed of 70 km/h, but is signed at 60 km/h. A rural freeway is designed to 130 km/h but signed at 110 km/h. This difference is to protect most drivers out on the road. If someone goes faster then that and crashes, it's their own fault. In all honesty though, photo radar in Edmonton is not bad. They sit at the same 2 dozen spots in the City and make zero attempt to hide. If you get a ticket, you weren't paying attention. Even laser is usually found at about 2 dozen typical spots in the City. Even then in typical circumstances, they will only start to ticket you at 15 km/h over the limit. It's the smaller Cities in Alberta that are the problem.
We in BC are tired of all the rednecks from Alberta, driving across the Rocky Mountains in their rusty pickup trucks, to terrorize us. Ticket them all!
@barely.working, The mini vans and Colorado/Canyon with the topper are pretty easy to spot in most instances (since they usually only sit in the same spots all the time). But that 'fake' power utility box is pretty tough to spot unless you are really paying attention.