Red-light cameras are working in Toronto.

Not just to snap a photo and mail a ticket to red-light running scofflaws but to help reduce this dangerous driving behaviour, the city says.

So much so that Toronto actually brought in less revenue than it expected last year from its red-light cameras, at least in part because of the improved compliance of drivers.

That’s great.

In a city that’s constantly facing needless pedestrian deaths, news that at least some intersections are getting safer is worth a moment of celebration.

It also raises an important question: why are police not applying this lesson to other traffic offences?

If ticketing more drivers who run red lights has resulted in significant reductions in collisions, injuries and deaths, then surely ticketing more drivers for speeding, distracted driving or blowing through stop signs would also help make roads safer.

Yet Toronto police handed out fewer traffic offences tickets last year than any time in the past decade.

According to city records, police laid 200,788 provincial offence charges (the bulk of which are traffic-related) in 2019. That’s down from nearly 700,000 in 2010.

That steep decline is certainly not because drivers have suddenly become that much more law-abiding. Anyone who regularly walks, bikes or drives in Toronto knows how rare it is to make it through even a single day without seeing examples of dangerous and distracted driving and a close call or two.

Pedestrian deaths have more than doubled from 2010 to 2019. There were 42 last year.

The decline in tickets is largely a result of Toronto police disbanding their dedicated traffic enforcement unit in 2013 and the rest of the force being told that traffic enforcement is just “a supplemental role” to their main duties of policing.

Treating traffic enforcement so casually makes no sense given its deadly consequences. Pedestrian deaths in Toronto are now about on par with shooting deaths.

Dangerous driving demands far more attention than police have given it in recent years, and more than the newly created traffic enforcement squad of a paltry six officers and two supervisors will be able to deliver.

The new Toronto police shift schedule, which is supposed to give frontline officers more time for proactive policing, holds a little more promise for seeing increased traffic enforcement.

But it’s troubling that, despite all the evidence of the need for more traffic enforcement, Chief Mark Saunders continues to look away. He says the decline in traffic enforcement and tickets can’t possibly be connected to the rise in collisions and pedestrians deaths.

When asked about the correlation last week by councillor Michael Thompson, Saunders called it “not an accurate assumption.”

And yet a report Saunders sent to council late last year clearly demonstrates what a difference enforcement makes.

“It has been well documented through numerous studies that enforcement is a key component to achieving a reduction in deaths and injuries caused through preventable collisions and poor driving behaviour,” the report states. Between 2003 and 2012, when Toronto police had a dedicated traffic unit and traffic officers were visible and proactive, they “were effective in changing behaviour.”

It seems clear that the Toronto Police Service is hoping that automation will take over the mundane work of ticketing drivers who flout the law.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

To some degree it will. Already Toronto’s red-light cameras are being doubled and photo-radar cameras are being rolled out in some school and community safety zones. But on its own that’s not enough.

Someday, maybe we’ll have robots capable of assessing all traffic violations and we can trust them to enforce our traffic laws.

Until then, police need to start treating traffic safety in Toronto as the deadly serious business that it is.