Thousands of tickets handed out by Toronto’s new automated speed enforcement system were repeat offenders.
According to data released Tuesday by the city, 2,239 of the 22,301 tickets issued by the program were to repeat offenders, with one leadfoot receiving 12 individual citations from a camera installed on Crow Trail near Bradstone Square in Scarborough.
That total is nearly four times higher than the 591 repeat offenders busted in the program’s first two weeks.
Launched on July 6, the long-delayed photo radar system started handing out tickets to speeders via a network of 50 cameras installed in community safety zones.
The cameras will remain in place until October, when the city will consider moving them to different locations.
Speaking at one of those locations Tuesday morning near Keelesdale Junior Public School, Mayor John Tory said with Toronto kids heading back to school next week, road safety becomes a renewed concern.
“Speeding remains a major challenge to safety in the city of Toronto,” he said.
“Time and time again, it has been proven that speeding is a major factor in many of the collisions that result in injury or death.”
The numbers released Tuesday reinforce that point, he said.
As reported in late July, the highest speed recorded — 89 km/h, or 49 km/h over the posted speed limit — was captured by a camera on Renforth Dr. near Lafferty St., resulting in a $718 ticket.
That camera was also the busiest in the program’s first two weeks, issuing 890 tickets, or 12% of all tickets issued July 6-20.
Between July 6 and Aug. 5, that camera recorded 2,239 speed violations.
The cameras, Tory said, free up police officers from manning speed traps and allow them to take on other duties.
Toronto’s $25-million speed camera program is part of the city’s Vision Zero five-year traffic fatality reduction strategy.
In late July, a system glitch resulted in the issuing of hundreds of erroneous tickets to drivers who hadn’t broken the law, due to incorrectly set speed limits in three cameras.
That came almost a month after one of the 800-pound ground-mounted cameras was yanked out of the ground and stolen near Jameson Ave. and Queen St. W. in Parkdale.
Another unit was set on fire on July 26 in Scarborough, and in January one had its lens covered in spray paint shortly after it was installed near Steeles Ave. and Bathurst St. in North York.
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