British Columbia is replacing all 140 of its Intersection Safety Cameras with modern equipment. The existing cameras will remain operational while replacements are installed through spring 2027.
The province says the cameras are working: red-light violations have fallen 13% over the past five years, repeat red-light offenders are down 29%, and at the 35 locations where speeding is enforced, drivers travelling more than 25 km/h over the limit have fallen 52% in three years.
Those numbers are encouraging, but they raise a bigger question: do intersection safety cameras actually make us safer?
I have written about automated enforcement before. In 2013, I examined the effectiveness of British Columbia's former photo radar program. More recently, I looked at why today's Intersection Safety Camera tickets do not result in driver penalty points.
What the cameras are supposed to do
British Columbia's Intersection Safety Camera program has operated since 1999. The cameras are located at intersections identified through collision and other data as high risk.
All 140 cameras enforce red-light violations. At present, 35 of them also enforce speeding. At a speed-enforcement location, a vehicle can be ticketed for exceeding the speed limit whether the traffic signal is red, yellow or green.
The cameras are not intended to replace police officers. They automate enforcement at locations where red-light running and, at some locations, excessive speed have been identified as safety concerns. Warning signs tell drivers when they are approaching a camera-equipped intersection.
Is the program changing driver behaviour?
The latest government announcement provides some useful evidence. During the past five years, red-light infractions at the 140 camera locations have decreased by 13%. Repeat red-light offenders have declined by 29%.
At the 35 locations where speeding can result in a ticket, the number of drivers travelling more than 25 km/h over the speed limit has decreased by 52% during the past three years.
Those numbers suggest that the cameras are having an effect on behaviour. Fewer violations is a better result than more violations, particularly when the violations being prevented are running red lights and excessive speed.
But there is an important distinction between measuring violations and measuring collisions. A reduction in violations does not automatically tell us how many serious crashes have been prevented.
RoadSafetyBC says that the cameras have helped reduce serious crashes, including side-impact, head-on and pedestrian crashes. That is encouraging, but the announcement does not provide the collision numbers or methodology behind that statement. It would be useful to see more of the evidence connecting the reduction in violations to the reduction in serious collisions.
What about the “tax grab” argument?
An Intersection Safety Camera ticket is issued to the registered owner of the vehicle. The driver is not identified and the owner does not receive driver penalty points. Since September 1, 2018, the registered owner has also been unable to nominate another driver to take responsibility for the ticket.
There is a legitimate criticism to be made here. A driver who repeatedly runs red lights or speeds through camera-enforced intersections can receive repeated fines without accumulating driver penalty points or having the offences placed on an individual driving record. As long as the fines can be paid, there is no driver-based sanction that escalates with each conviction.
That does not prove that the cameras are a tax grab. It does, however, expose a weakness in the enforcement model. If the objective is to change the behaviour of dangerous drivers, financial penalties alone may not be enough for someone who can afford to keep paying them.
Commercial vehicles are treated differently. A conviction involving a commercial vehicle adds points to the carrier's National Safety Code profile. That gives the offence consequences beyond the fine for the carrier.
There is an interesting practical question about how this works with tractor-trailers. A trailer may be leased or owned by someone other than the company operating the tractor. If the trailer's licence plate is the one used to identify the vehicle, it may not reliably identify the carrier responsible for the vehicle at the time of the offence. We don't know from the publicly available information whether the camera system uses the front licence plate of the tractor to resolve this, or how many camera convictions have actually resulted in National Safety Code points being assigned.
There is also another side to the revenue argument. The province says net revenue from Intersection Safety Camera tickets is returned to B.C. municipalities to support policing and public-safety programs. The fact that money is collected does not, by itself, tell us whether the program is effective or whether its primary purpose is revenue.
Do we need to identify the driver?
This is the question I find most interesting.
Automated enforcement does not necessarily have to identify every driver to be effective. If drivers know that an intersection is monitored and change their behaviour before they get there, the camera has accomplished the road-safety objective without issuing a ticket.
On the other hand, a system that cannot identify the driver has fewer tools available when someone repeatedly commits offences. Other jurisdictions have taken a different approach. For example, New South Wales requires companies to nominate the driver responsible for certain automated enforcement offences and can penalize a company that fails to do so.
That does not mean British Columbia should simply copy another jurisdiction. It does demonstrate that owner-based automated enforcement is not the only possible model.
What will the new cameras do?
The replacement cameras will be supplied and maintained by Jenoptik Canada. The province says the new equipment will have higher resolution and “similar enforcement and data capabilities” to the previous cameras.
That wording leaves an interesting question unanswered.
We know that 105 of the existing cameras monitor red-light violations only and 35 monitor both red lights and speed. The announcement does not say whether that arrangement will remain unchanged when the new cameras are installed.
Nor should we assume that all 140 replacement cameras will be capable of issuing speeding tickets. The announcement simply does not tell us that. What we can say is that the new equipment is intended to continue the existing program with similar enforcement capabilities.
It will be interesting to see whether the replacement program eventually expands speed enforcement to additional locations, particularly since the province says the camera sites were selected using data about where red-light running and speeding contribute to serious crashes.
So, do they make us safer?
The evidence available today points toward yes, but it is not as simple as counting tickets.
Red-light violations are down. Repeat violations are down. At the locations where speeding enforcement is in use, extreme speeding violations are down substantially. The province says the cameras have helped reduce serious crashes at camera locations.
Those are good reasons to believe that automated enforcement can contribute to road safety.
That does not mean the system is perfect. The inability to identify the driver limits the consequences for repeat offenders. The current program treats a camera offence differently from an offence detected by a police officer, even when the underlying driving behaviour may be just as dangerous.
We should also judge the program by its safety results, not by how much money the cameras collect. The goal should be fewer people running red lights, fewer people travelling at dangerous speeds and, ultimately, fewer people killed or seriously injured in collisions.
If replacing the cameras continues to reduce dangerous behaviour and serious crashes, that is a worthwhile investment. If the evidence eventually shows that the program can be improved by identifying persistent offenders or expanding speed enforcement where it is justified, we should be willing to consider those improvements too.
Automated enforcement does not have to be perfect to be useful. But if we are going to call it a road-safety program, we should keep asking whether it is actually making our roads safer.
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