TO SERVE AND COLLECT

The front page headline in today's Waterloo Region Record is titled "Broken cameras put region in red". So red light cameras we've been told are solely for road safety and not just another hidden tax on citizens. Horse feathers! When the Region are so dependent upon revenue from red light cameras as well as other so called driving infractions that a cutback in tickets seriously negatively affects their budget deficit then you know what it's all about. Based upon 48 years of both commercial and private driving, I know that speeding tickets are a huge scam and revenue producer. They do not make for better drivers, they make for drivers who do not smartly pass a vehicle on their right and then pulling back into that lane themselves. Instead they oh so slowly creep up into their blind spots, sit there for a while and if they don't see any hidden or lurking cruisers then inch by 1.5 km/hour faster than the vehicle they are passing. It's all about the police nailing the drivers who are intelligent enough to know better than to drive in a pack if there is the opportunity to get out of a tight knit group and into an area where you have better visibility ahead as well as manoeveribility to change lanes if something suddenly crops up in front of you.

I would love to see exactly how many red light tickets are all about the one idiot in five hundred who floors the vehicle when he is well back from the intersection and catches the yellow caution; knowing full well he'll never make it across in time. I expect that the majority are trying to make left hand turns and indeed may get ticketed because they wait upon an oncoming driver who is both slow and late for the green. Also according to a study published here in the Record a few months back ; these red light cameras are actually causing accidents as drivers knowing the heft of the ticket, slam on their brakes the instant the caution light comes on, thus getting rearended. Then there are the idiot drivers with a green light who are braking all the way up to the intersection and through it because the caution light might come on. When will our idiot authorities understand that the majority of drivers are trained by the stupidity of the enforcement? Very few tickets for no turn signals, then guess what. No tickets for driving too slowly for conditions then guess what? And on and on including driving in the left hand, fast lane with nobody in the right lane and cars backed up behind you in the left lane. So called "sin" taxes have always been problematic especially when the revenue is not being spent to improve conditions related to the alleged sins. This is simply legalized theft.