Newfoundland and Labrador has caught thousands of speeders. Now it wants to fine them

Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial government is promising to roll out speed cameras on provincial highways, after a pilot program last summer caught thousands of speeders.

A three-month pilot program, using just two cameras in two Newfoundland communities, caught more than 94,000 vehicles breaking the law, according to Sarah Stoodley, the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.

Cameras captured 94,000 instances of a vehicle travelling more than 11 km/h faster than the posted legal limit, Stoodley said, and a quarter of those instances saw the driver moving more than 20 km/h faster than the legal limit.

“Which is quite shocking,” Stoodley said, “Considering we only have 520,000 people in Newfoundland and Labrador.”

“These are on residential streets with speed limits of 40 or 50 km/h, some of them in school zones. So speeding is a problem.”

None of the offending drivers caught last summer received a fine — only a warning letter. But Stoodley said instituting a system to levy fines against speeding drivers is now one of her top priorities.

“People are concerned with speeding in their neighbourhoods,” she said. “A lot of people are looking for anything that will reduce speeds.”

The high number of speeders didn’t shock driving instructor Paul Prowse, who has been teaching others how to drive for decades in St. John’s.

“What I try to tell people to do and how to drive, according to the rules of the road and the Highway Traffic Act, 95 per cent of what's on the street are not doing it,” he said.

Prowse said he doesn’t believe Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are particularly aggressive — he just thinks people get too caught up in other things when they’re on the road.

“You're rushing home, you're trying to put supper together, feed the kids, get the kids to their soccer, to their baseball, to their dance, to wherever it is the kids got to go,” he said. “Everybody is in a rush.”

“The city is becoming so fast, I’ve noticed it in the past 15 years, since the malls are open on Sundays now.”

While Prowse believed the warnings that came from the speed cameras — both the flashing numbers on the signs and the letters in the mail — would help, he’s convinced now that fines will do the trick.

So many vehicles broke the law during the pilot project that government staff had a hard time writing all the notices, Stoodley said.

She’s wary of a system where thousands of new highway traffic act violations can be appealed to the courts, so she’s working on a way to levy fines that won’t be so resource intensive.

“The approach that I’m hoping to bring forward will allow us to deliver a financial penalty for excessive speeding without bothering the justice system,” she said. “I know other provinces are look at [that] as well.”

Stoodley said whatever revenue the speed camera program raises will go into the general pot for the provincial government, but she’s hoping it doesn’t raise very much.

Instead, she wants people to slow down so they don’t get fined at all.

“Our goal is to curb speeding.”