Someone keeps sawing that speed camera in Toronto

Some Toronto drivers really aren’t fans of the city speed cameras and take matters into their own hands. Late last week, a camera on Parkside Drive was switched off less than 24 hours after it was reinstalled after being similarly vandalized a few weeks ago.

Parkside Drive, the main thoroughfare that borders Toronto’s High Park, is a bit of a traffic safety hotspot. With a current limit of 40 km/h (25 mph) (previously 50 km/h), speeding is very common, and in 2021 a speeding collision resulted in the death of an elderly couple who had been stopped at a red light. In response to the 2021 incident, the city lowered the speed limit on Parkside, adding signs and cameras in hopes of slowing down drivers. A community advocacy group called Safe Parkside has been formed, and the city recently announced plans to add bike lanes in an attempt to curb speeding.

So far, none of these measures seem to have worked, because according to city data, the trans CityNewsthe Parkside speed camera is Toronto’s top-grossing speed camera, snapping 63,000 speeders since it was installed, resulting in $6.8 million in fines.

As tempting as it is to applaud the literal downfall of the pesky speed camera, the situation is an unfortunate result of an inherently poorly designed road, and we don’t condone the transfer of Sawzall to public ownership just because you don’t like what it’s doing.

Parkside, as a place to ride, is clearly designed for higher speeds, but is also crowded with park-goers, pedestrians and nearby homes. Drivers are frustrated by the low speed limits, everyone else is put in danger by drivers who break the limits anyway, and no one wins – except maybe the City of Toronto’s bean counters, who have made nearly $7 million in extra profits to date.

It’s a delicate problem, where the real solutions are often big infrastructural and societal changes that not many governments are really willing or even able to undertake. Here’s a recent video we posted on the topic:

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