Amid a string of high profile excessive speeding incidents, one Victoria-area official is pitching a return to photo radar.
Chris Foord, Vice-chair of the Capital Regional District Traffic Safety Commission wants to see the program put in place specifically on the Malahat, but said it’s worth looking at elsewhere in the province as well.
LISTEN: Chris Foord makes the case for a return to photo radar
Foord’s pitch comes after yet another supercar driver was caught exceeding the speed limit by more than 40 kilomtetres an hour, this time a Ferarri on the Malahat.
It comes after a Lamborghini and Ferrari driver both had their keys taken away in Metro Vancouver in recent days for similar incidents.
Speaking on the Simi Sara Show, Foord said it’s common for “speed demons” on the Malahat to get up to 140 or 150 km/h.
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“It’s just reckless abandon,” he said.
He is now reaching out to the Cowichan Valley Regional District, and asking it to join with him in petitioning the province to bring back speed cameras.
“We need to keep people to within safe speeds. Right now, your right or my right to drive as fast as you want goes unchallenged unless there’s a police officer there to challenge you at a given point in time,” Foord said.
WATCH: Speeding Ferarri sparks outrage
B.C. had photo radar cameras in place from 1996 to 2001.
The program was highly unpopular, with many people arguing a single snapshot, perhaps on a hill, wasn’t a fair test of how they were driving.
But Foord said there’s a solution to that: Interval-based cameras.
Under the system he’s proposing, two cameras are set up at different points on the highway.
A driver is snapped entering and exiting the zone, and based on how long it takes to cover the distance an average speed is calculated.
Foord said under his proposal anyone averaging more than 20 km/h over the limit would be slapped with a ticket.
Foord said while he wants the cameras on the Malahat specifically, other parts of B.C. could benefit from them as well.
He argues the province’s experiment with raising speed limits has been a failure, with some routes rolling the increases back after seeing a 100 per cent increase in crashes.
“There’s two other, I think, logical areas in the province where this could help. One is the Sea-to-Sky Highway, and the second would be the Coquihalla Connector. Three perfect locations for testing out what this kind of technology can do.”
Foord acknowledged his proposal would be politically unpopular, but said from the perspective of saving lives, it’s the right thing to do.
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