Accurate photo radar data needed

By Letter to the Editor on February 27, 2019.

I’m not sure that Insp. Joe West is being totally truthful, accurate, honest and/or factual in his defence of photo radar, “according to data provided by the province” (which after an hour of Google I could not find) “automated traffic enforcement has reduced collisions by 1.4 per cent and the proportion of fatal collisions by 5.4 per cent.”

This would appear to me to mean that since photo radar started operation in Alberta 20 years or so ago that collisions have gone down in number, although to most people a figure of 1.4 per cent over 20 years is closer to a rounding error that the actual number might be.

Fatal collisions down by 5.4 per cent. Awesome! All inferred to be caused by Albertans driving safer due to photo radar operations. Really!

Nothing in the article about vehicles now having automatic braking, lane-changing warning, ABS, airbags, steel door beams, frontal crush zones, etc.

I suspect that there are fewer drivers in the 16 to 25 year old range on the road today versus “back then” due to insurance and vehicle cost and just lifestyle.

Maybe Insp. West could do a follow-up piece on this article to show us that he really has done his due diligence on this matter.

I am not saying that “automated traffic enforcement” is either a “cash haul” or a good thing. I am saying that we need accurate and factual information and not data backup that doesn’t even start to pass the smell test.

Keith Pearce

Medicine Hat

10
-9