How To Stop Speeders

November 19, 2019, Kitchener, Ontario

Posted by: Robert Deutschmann, Personal Injury Lawyer

We've covered different ways of police enforcement of speeding on roads and highways. From fake cut out police holding radar guns, to school children talking to people caught speeding in front of schools. Police have tried staging fake accidents, displaying crashed cars, demonstrating rolling vehicles, and using photo radar. Police are certainly innovative in their approach to shaming speeders. In some jurisdictions the amount of the fine is dependant on your income and be enormous.

The problem seems to be that globally people like to speed. Ontario roads are no different, and the magic bullet to stop speeding is elusive. While we had photo radar on the 400 series it worked to slow traffic down, but the exercise became unpalatable politically and was stopped.

The latest deterrent is one they are trying in Estonia.  It’s an experiment as much as anything else – officials are trying to measure if it would work as a deterrent. Of the 15 people caught 11 people met the speeding parameters (were going slowly enough) and were given the choice to wait or pay. Six chose to wait, including one who would have faced a nearly $600 fine.

TheDrive.com reported the following:

We are investigating how speeders perceive the fine and the impact of the lost time. We know from interviews with motorists that some people consider having a conversation with a police officer and the time they take to intervene more effectively than fines." said Elari Kasemets, an Innovation Advisor at Estonia's Police and Border Guard Board.

"On the basis of these police operations, we will collect information about the reasons speeders give to justify breaking the limit. We are analyzing the impact of different interventions to find more effective solutions, because the goal is for perpetrators to actually change their behavior, not to punish them for the sake of punishment."

Drivers in Estonia reportedly often treat speeding tickets like any other bill. Often, the fines are automatically generated by speed cameras and aren't detrimental to one's driving record. If a speeder gets a fine in the mail, they pay it and move on. The idea of this particular experiment is to show that dealing with a speeding ticket can be more annoying than the few extra minutes that it takes to get to a destination by traveling the speed limit.

Some European countries believe that hurting someone in the wallet is still the most effective method of mitigating speeding. In countries like Finland, for example, the fine for speeding scales with the offender's income. Although the true price of speeding often comes once your vehicle insurer finds out about the shiny new ticket you earned.

While the experiment proved to be an overall positive experience, it's not truly scalable. The manpower needed to staff such an initiative (should it be successful enough for widespread adoption) would be massive—way more than the police force currently uses for traffic enforcement. But that doesn't mean this is the end—as advisors come up with new ways to curb speeding, hopefully, a future experiment will prove successful.

About Deutschmann Law

Deutschmann Law serves South-Western Ontario with offices in Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Woodstock, Brantford, Stratford and Ayr. The law practice of Robert Deutschmann focuses almost exclusively in personal injury and disability insurance matters. For more information, please visit www.deutschmannlaw.com or call us at 1-519-742-7774.

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