Some Wellington North councillors have questioned the need for speed in local communities.
Councillor Dan Yake made his personal observations to Wellington OPP Inspector Scott Smith at a recent council session.
Yake explained he lives in Mount Forest and works in Arthur so he is quite familiar with traffic along Highway 6.
“I drive back and forth on that highway every day. It can be like a NASCAR race on the highway.”
Yake said he could count the number of times on one hand where he has seen people actually stopped for speeding. He said one drives through Kenilworth and there are 20 police cars doing training.
While he did not dispute the need for training, he still wanted to see more officers patrolling the highway.
“It’s a wonder there are not more fatalities on that road,” Yake said.
Smith agreed wholeheartedly with Yake’s comments and said one of the things being done is, through a partnership with the county, arranging a number of speed radar signs, which register the speeds of vehicles in specific areas.
He explained, “These particular ones have a program attached to them which can download information as to what the high and low speeds are, and the time of day and day of the week when we have problems.”
Smith said, “Traffic complaints are probably our number one complaint in Wellington County.”
He said that, combined with early hour residential alarms going on, it makes it difficult for officers to concentrate on traffic the way they need to.
Smith said in the early part of the morning, officers need to be in the school zones, to address concerns of parents and teachers and to ensure the safety of the students.
Yake said he lives on a street where a similar type of township-owned speed sign exists.
“It may not be as hi-tech as yours,” Yake said. “Signs were recently placed on it not too far from my place. As I watched it for a week, I saw the speed limits continually increase as people tried to get it up from the corner to the sign. It went from 20km/hour to 100 in a residential area.
“As it was sitting there longer, and there was no police presence … it was just a sign. They knew there was nothing there.”
Smith said that’s part of one of his strategies.
“One of the greatest tricks I’ve done in other detachments is to run those signs for a week or so, then put another marked car down the road with a radar gun,” he said. “You have to back them up, otherwise the sign is essentially useless.”
