Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks about roadway speed cameras at the Vaughan Joint Operations Centre in Ontario in September, 2025.Jon Blacker/The Canadian Press
Nobody likes to get a speeding ticket. That’s why cities that install cameras to catch lead-footed drivers tend to see a slowing trend. People react rationally to incentives. If the choice is the chance of a substantial fine versus arriving a bit more slowly, people will tend to vote with their wallet.
That same pattern was emerging in Ontario, until Premier Doug Ford ordered the province’s speed cameras removed in November. Unsurprisingly, drivers have quickly unlearned the lesson of the cameras. Data from Toronto and Ottawa show that the riskiest forms of speeding are back on the rise since the cameras came out in November.
The whole speed camera episode would be funny if it were not so dangerous. A conservative premier who touts his fiscally prudent and law-and-order bona fides removes a cheap and effective way to improve public safety, choosing instead to side with scofflaw drivers.
Speed camera ban sees more drivers breaking limit in Ottawa school zones, report shows
Of course, the Ontario government would dispute that characterization. Mr. Ford has repeatedly claimed that speed cameras are ineffective. And his government has proposed a series of measures that it says will reduce speeding.
There are several problems with the government position.
For one, the data clearly show that the cameras were working. Drivers were learning. Second, some of the measures proposed by the government are likely to be ineffective, such as installing huge speed limit signs, or difficult to retrofit into urban settings, such as building roundabouts. And finally, even if there were good replacements, they take time to implement.
Staff in the province’s biggest cities say that money has started to flow for the replacement measures, though modest progress has been made in implementing them. Meanwhile, drivers are speeding up already.
In Toronto, although the cameras are gone, motorist behaviour can still be assessed via electronic signs that flash numbers at drivers to indicate their speed. These signs also record the vehicle’s speed, although no picture is taken or ticket issued.
City data from such signs within 200 metres of fixed-location cameras were analyzed by The Globe and Mail. The results show that the number of people driving more than 15 kilometres an hour above the limit near the cameras dropped more than it did city-wide while the cameras were in place, then started to rise again once they were gone.
In Ottawa, city staff have periodically deployed radar units where cameras had been to measure traffic volumes and speeds. According to a staff report in April, the percentage of drivers respecting the limit dropped 25 percentage points within a week of the cameras being removed, and then continued to fall. Compliance fell to 41 per cent from 87 per cent over 12 weeks.
What Ottawa staff call “high-end speeding” – which they define as more than 15 km/h above the limit – went from 0.3 per cent of drivers with the cameras in place to 4.5 per cent 12 weeks after they were gone.
Although it was Mr. Ford’s government that allowed cities to install cameras, starting in 2019, he gradually came to side with drivers who complained they were unfair.
He has called cameras “a cash grab,” which ignores that the only way to get a ticket is to speed. He raised the prospect of drivers being penalized for going barely too fast, although the Toronto Star reported that, in Toronto-area cities anyway, speeders had to be going at least 11 km/h above the limit to get a ticket.
Road safety experts know that faster speed brings risk. A person getting hit by a vehicle travelling 30 km/h will most likely survive while one hit at 60 km/h will probably die. Higher speeds also narrow a driver’s field of vision, limiting their ability to spot emerging situations, while also reducing the time available to respond.
A more rational approach to reducing the risk of speeding, if one were determined to get rid of cameras, would be to roll out replacement measures, establish that they work, and only then remove the cameras. Unfortunately, Mr. Ford did not do that. And drivers reacted predictably.