 鲜花( 7)  鸡蛋( 0)
|
发表于 2014-3-18 22:13
来自手机
|
显示全部楼层
|
EDMONTON - There’s a new traffic cop in town and he’s got an itchy photo radar finger. From 2009 to 2012, when the Edmonton Police Service ran the city’s photo radar program, the program raised just $18.8 million per year. In 2013, the City of Edmonton’s traffic safety office took over photo radar. Suddenly, in one year, photo radar revenue more than doubled to $41.3 million. What accounts for this gusher of revenue? If you ask around, you’ll hear all kinds of stories from Edmonton drivers for the first time getting speeding tickets for going as little as 10 km/h over the speed limit. This includes former photo radar cop Neil Armstrong. Armstrong recently got a ticket for 10 km/h over on Groat Road. The ticket surprised him, since he was operating under the belief that tickets were only handed out for violations of more than 15 km/h. In fact, it was Armstrong himself who publicly declared this 15 km/h buffer existed in an Edmonton Journal article in 1996. When Armstrong called city traffic authorities to inquire about the 10 km/h over ticket, he was told the old 15 km/h buffer is now gone. City homicide detective Bill Clark also tells me the rules have changed. People never used to get tickets unless they were going 66 km/h in a 50 km/h zone, Clark says. “There is no doubt photo radar is a cash cow. They have lowered the speeds they issue the summonses at to increase revenue, no matter what they say.” Jim Howse, a former city police officer who ran traffic safety programs, says he’s alarmed to hear city traffic authorities now saying you can get a ticket for going as little as 1 km/h over the limit. “Can you envisage a situation where every driver afraid of being charged drove under the posted speed limit? Massive road rage.” Speed limits are a divisive issue, but we can all agree that we want safe streets. We can agree that the authorities should crack down on speedsters roaring by everyone else. But I strongly suspect most of would also agree that drivers going with the safe flow of traffic should not get a ticket. Drivers don’t want to get in a collision, so the majority of us drive safely, says Martin Parker Jr., of the Michigan firm Wade-Trim. Parker is an international expert in traffic engineering. Drivers tend to judge road conditions and stick with the flow of traffic, no matter what the speed limit is, Parker says. Drivers going way above or below the average speed are dangerous. But the key point is that on any given free-flow traffic route, there’s no difference in the collision rates of drivers going the average speed or drivers going at a speed in the 85th percentile, which is usually about five miles (8 km/h) per hour over the average. “The problem with setting the speed limit too low is, once they’re enforced that way, is we’re targeting one of the safest drivers,” Parker says. “If you set the limit too low you’ll get a majority of people exceeding that limit and they get an extremely abnormal amount of tickets that way. “It’s all right for generating revenue. It’s really poor if we’re trying to enforce the idea of a safe and reasonable speed limit.” Gerry Shimko, who runs the city’s traffic safety department, says his focus is traffic safety. He points out that since 2006 the number of local fatality or injury-related crashes has almost been cut in half, from 6,092 to 3,226. This is impressive, but it’s crucial to note these bad collisions had dropped to 3,388 by 2012, the year before revenues from photo radar fines shot up. Something else evidently caused the drop in bad collisions, not the 2013 speeding crackdown. For his part, Shimko won’t say if there’s a different buffer now, but says his department is using new methods such as speed surveys to find where speeding is going on. “We’ve taken it to a whole new level in terms of determining where the issues are.” Make no mistake, we owe a debt of gratitude to Shimko and all in traffic enforcement for the leading role they’ve played in decreasing the worst of our accidents. Their data-driven approach is working. But there’s no compelling evidence that suddenly cracking down on drivers going with the flow @edmontonjournal.com来自: iPhone客户端 |
|
狗仔卡
提升卡
置顶卡
沉默卡
喧嚣卡
变色卡
显身卡
楼主
新成语，请google之
发表于 2014-3-17 10:46
