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“If you drive through on a red light, you’re (now) going to get two tickets.”

Neither Farnworth nor the police will say what constitutes excessive speed, only that there will be many signs at intersections with the new cameras to give plenty of warning. The cameras will take three images (vehicles entering, going through and exiting intersections) and tickets will be mailed to their registered owners.

No points are assessed against the owner’s driving record and the tickets will not affect ICBC premiums.

“If I take my dad’s car and he gets a ticket, I think that would be pretty effective. I may get away with it once, I’m certainly not going to get away with it a second time.”

Farnworth said the cameras are about safety, not raising revenue, but the concern Liberal critic Mike Morris has is they are exactly that.

“We have a money-hungry government trying to get a revenue source wherever they can,” he said. “They’re more interested in the cash than the crash.”

Morris is also concerned that having only cameras at dangerous intersections means drivers escape with a speeding and/or red-light ticket when they should really be facing charges for something like driving without due care and attention or without reasonable consideration of others using the road.

A camera “turns it into a radar trap,” he said.

And that, Ian Toothill, co-founder of drivers’ advocacy group Sense B.C., said is the very definition of a cash grab.

“It’s designed to extract money out of a vehicle owner,” Toothill said. “And they can keep doing what they’re doing (speeding) as long as they pay the fine.