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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: Edmonton ranks 19th on North American speed-trap list EDMONTON - It’s no livability index, but Edmonton is being touted as one of Canada’s top cities. It sits 19th on the National Motorists Association’s ranking top 25 U.S. and Canadian cities for reported speed traps. The online list compiles two years of reader reports at http://www.speedtrap.org, divided by most recent U.S. and Canadian census data. With 3.3 speed traps per 100,000 residents, Edmonton is sandwiched between Houston (4.0) and San Diego (3.2) in a list topped by Livonia, Michigan’s whopping 27.9 traps per 100,000 residents. Among Canadian cities, Windsor (17.6), Hamilton (5.0), and Toronto (4.7) beat us. “As far as being No. 1, or No. 10, or No. 20, or whatever, I don’t think it really matters to us,” said Edmonton police Staff Sgt. Barry Maron. “We have a traffic plan and go out to do enforcement.” The National Motorists Association describes itself as an organization of drivers attempting to avoid becoming “unwitting cannon fodder for self-serving government programs, overbearing police departments or greedy courts.” It describes speed traps as the combination of “arbitrarily low speed limits and heavy traffic enforcement.” Maron said the organization’s data depends on people reporting speed traps, not actual numbers. And it may not account for actual traffic volume, since different cities may have more commuters entering from neighbouring municipalities. In April, Edmonton added a crew of six traffic enforcers to target high speed locations. Maron said the crew has had particular success in nabbing drivers exceeding speed limits by more than 50 kilometres an hour. But even if Edmonton enforces traffic more than other cities, Maron isn’t buying any “cannon fodder” arguments. Placing speed traps in transition zones — where speed limits drop drastically — can be disputed in court. “We don’t get anything from writing the tickets, it doesn’t matter how many tickets we write,” said Maron. “We do it because it’s the right thing to do.” Revenue generated from traffic enforcement goes back to the city. Maron said, the traffic unit picks enforcement spots based on public complaints, speed surveys, and collision data. It measures success in collision data, which has improved since Edmonton police stepped up enforcement in 2009. “When you look at the statistics, what I see are property damage collisions and injury collisions — and so far this year, fatalities — declining,” Maron said. bwittmeier@edmontonjournal.c Read more: http://www.canada.com/Edmonton+r.../story.html#ixzz1WgLwgetl Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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