Thousands of Speeding Tickets mean Thousands of Dollars in "Back To School"

Where does the money go from speeding tickets?

Answer: To the municipality whose officer issues the tickets!

As Ontario school children headed back to school, local police issued thousands of speeding ticket in the name of a "Back to School Campaign". The municipality of Clarington Ontario is advertising to the media that the local police have issued 1,500 speeding tickets.

The math is, 1500 times 100 dollars equals $150,000.00 in fines in two weeks.

As police departments send out their army of police officers to write speeding tickets in the name of public safety, the city collects thousands of dollars in traffic ticket fines.

Of the thousands of dollars created by the police how much goes back into actually making school zones safer from speeding motorists... not much.

After years of complaining that speeding motorists put our children at risk, how much traffic calming has been installed around school zones to slow down drivers when the police are not watching?

When are they going to install traffic calming and implement road design that makes traffic move slowly through a school zone? When the municipalities stop making millions of dollars per year on traffic ticket fines that's when.

Every year the police send their army of officers out to collect fees for speeding tickets, and it doesn't seem to stop the problem. Traffic calming, like bicycle lanes, stop signs, road design and speed bumps would stop the speeding within school zones but how much have you actually seen of this.

Of the thousands of motorists caught speeding in Ontario, most were driving less than 20 km/h over the limit, hardly dangerous, and certainly at a level that a speed bump would have slowed them down to a crawl.

Lets put an end to this revenue system for the municipality, get the police doing more productive work and install some speed bumps and traffic calming.

Speeding Tickets - Another Holiday Weekend in Ontario

Although Canada Day arrived on a Thursday this year, many motorists took the Friday off in between and headed north to "cottage country in Ontario".

Again the OPP, Ontario Provincial Police sent out their army of officers with high tech equipment (laser beams, radar and airplanes) to stop the rush of drivers heading to the cottage.

Although the police have been enforcing the speeding laws of Ontario for years, and have increased their budgets, the police just haven't been able to stop the problem of speeding.

Motorists still speed.

With the money it costs to put a police officer, or a group of police officers out doing speed enforcement, there must be a better way.

Imagine what it costs to put an airplane into the air with a pilot and spotter, then 3 or 4 police cars on the road catching the speeders. The cost to stop one driver speeding on the highway can be well over 500 dollars.

Lets work this out

Airplane enforcement

• One airplane with fuel - 250 per hour (probably more..)
  
• One police pilot to fly the plane (rank of Sergeant 90k/year) - 45 per hour
• One Constable as spotter in the plane - 35 per hour
• Three Constables on ground to stop drivers - 105 per hour (35 x 3)
• Three marked police vehicles - 150 hour (50 x 3)
• Total Cost 585 per hour (estimated)

This is an estimated cost of speeding ticket enforcement with an airplane. I really dont think that 250 per hour for a plane is right, its probably 1000/hour, but it gives you an idea...

So for an eight hour shift speeding ticket enforcement on Ontario Highways can cost taxpayers close to five thousand dollars, and the real cost is probably more!

That's per day, imagine what the cost of speeding ticket enforcement is per year??

What about the cost of the training, the cost of sending the officers to the court, the cost of laser, and radar guns... It starts to add up to an incredible amount of money.

After sending out this army of officers day after day, year after year, isn't it about time that the government, the police and us the public started looking at other more effective ways of stopping speeding??

What about every new car having a speed limiting governor installed on it from the manufacture?

So that no one would have a car that is capable of driving more than 100km/h, or even make it 120km/h. Wouldn't that have a positive effect on speeding in Ontario? What about the number of lives that would be saved because no one is driving over the speed limit on the highway, who needs to go over 120km/h?

What about traffic calming, why doesn't the government put in traffic calming on every new road they are making? you know like speed bumps, planters, bicycle lanes. Shouldn't this be mandatory around any new school that is built?

I know we couldn't put traffic calming on 400 series highways but we can put traffic calming on other roads within the towns and cities?

When you start to look at speeding in Ontario, you start to realize that maybe there is another issue here.... Like money. Speeding tickets create fines, and the fines from speeding tickets go to the municipality where the ticket is issued.

Police Speeding ticket enforcement, having not changed in 25 years or more, its high time government looked at other ways of controlling the problem.

After sending an army of police officers out every day to write speeding tickets drivers are still speeding, and its not working...