Last month when Solicitor General Mike Farnworth was out stumping for these new cameras being set up at intersections across B.C. to catch the “fastest” motorists passing through red, yellow and green lights, he offered up this tasty sound-bite to the media: “If you drive like a normal person, you’re not going to get a ticket. Drive like a self-entitled jerk, you’ll get a ticket.”
He has a point. However, there are troubling aspects to this new provincial-government program, which eventually will see 146 cameras installed in 26 communities to deter local drivers from running a red light.
The impact in the Okanagan is limited so far to Kelowna, with cameras set up at two locations along Highway 97.
This is a cash grab reminiscent of the massively unpopular photo radar program that was imposed on the people of B.C. by the provincial NDP government of the 1990s.
This political party is clearly still carrying a torch for such automated things, despite the damage it did to them at the election polls and support the incoming Liberals gained from promising to retire it, nearly two decades ago.
This NDP government swears up and down that today’s program is not photo radar, which it insists will not return under its watch.
We’re supposed to trust the government when it says the cameras will be “tweaked to slow the worst leadfoots.”
But this is a big ask, considering the NDP will not reveal the velocity threshold that will trigger these cameras.
– Black Press
