Former civil servant pleased with B.C. decision on speed cameras

A retired B.C. senior public servant is applauding the provincial government’s move in upgrading existing red-light cameras to monitor speeding 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

For now, the province won’t be handing out excessive speeding tickets, but it will use the information gathered by the cameras to determine if tickets are necessary – and to figure out how fast people will have to go before it issues a violation.

Richard McCandless says one issue he has with cameras and ticketing in general is that the administrative costs are paid for by basic insurance policy holders.

“But none of the revenue from issuing the tickets goes back to help pay for insurance, it just goes into the government’s general revenue. And they in turn hand out a good chunk of it to the munipalities, so there needs to be a rethink there – if you’re gonna expand the number of tickets issued, that money should flow back to ICBC,” he said.

“The broader theory is that it should reduce speeding, and it should reduce the number of crashes therefore there’s an indirect benefit to policy holders, but I’d rather have the cash in hand, thanks.”

He says while critics call it a revenue grab, he agrees, but if the revenue – in the form of fines – is going back to help lower insurance premiums, it’s not that at all.

The decision to have red light cameras track speeding was developed by the province to try to reduce ICBC rates.