If you could avoid over a thousand dollars a year in taxes with a few beneficial changes in behaviour, would you do it? Oddly enough, the answer is no.
Despite punishing taxation, people smoke. The cost of gasoline is largely taxes, but price has very little effect on consumption.
Alcohol is still a luxury item, so consumption does fluctuate with the economy, but it’s still a regular money-maker for government. A cash cow, just like gambling. A sacred cow, almost. A whole herd of cows to feed with our behaviour and our money.
But two cash cows we cannot abide are photo radar and red light cameras.
Even though we acknowledge that tickets are 100 per cent avoidable, and that the laws they enforce are useful and good, overwhelmingly, we hate these things.
The debate around their use is couched in phrases like “public safety” versus “cash grab.” But that argument misses an important part of what it is to be human, and to live in an urban environment.
The act of driving is in essence a series of decisions balancing risk. Vehicles are deadly weapons and everyone needs to be able to control them at all times, in concert with all the others clogging our streets.
When roads are dry and traffic is light, people can safely go a little faster. On our lumpy, bumpy residential streets, with packed snow forming ruts between parked vehicles on both sides, we slow down.
These decisions are independent of posted speed limits.
In optimum conditions, the actual speed limit on Hwy 2 is considerably higher than the posted 110 km/h, and we all know police do little to enforce it. When they try, people get angry.
Why aren’t the cops out catching the real criminals and drug dealers? Why are they stinging us with these hefty fines, when there’s no apparent danger? For the money? To fill budget quotas?
But let’s submit that the anger isn’t really directed at police here, or even at ourselves for being stupid enough to get caught speeding.
The anger is that the rules of balanced risk we constantly keep in mind while driving are being violated.
Speed cameras and red light cameras are robots and we don’t like being governed by robots.
There’s no robot made that can safely and efficiently drive in a city full of moving vehicles, and we don’t want robots to decide how to balance the risks involved.
Driving safely is one big grey zone of human decisions, and robots only see black and white.
That’s the real argument against photo radar, isn’t it?
But some people are comfortable with more risk than others. That’s why we have speed limits.
And as much as people complain about these cameras, others complain about speeders blowing past elementary schools while children are going in or coming out.
Those complaints deserve more consideration than complaints regarding cameras, because children don’t get to make the risk-balancing decisions of drivers — and they always lose when the equation goes wrong.
City council recently decided to add more photo radar to its law-enforcement arsenal, to add more risk of having to pay a big fine into the balance.
These cameras are generally put in the areas of greatest danger, and places where the most drivers need to consider speed in the decisions they make.
A cash cow? You bet. But they’re more effective than an overwhelming police presence in promoting traffic safety (police should be out catching “real criminals” anyway).
And eventually, they are hoped to change behaviour. A slim hope, given the evidence, but hope nonetheless.
If we don’t want to be governed by robots or cash cows, what would it take to make drivers slow down?
Greg Neiman is an Advocate editor.