One of a number of road safety initiatives being carried out in the Province of Ontario is a pilot project to assess the impacts of photo radar on road safety. The pilot involves signing designated sections of provincial highways and deploying 4 mobile photo radar cameras on these roadways. A total of 6 sites on these roads have been outfitted with magnetic induction loops connected to classifier/counters to monitor speeds on a 24 hours, 7 days a week basis. Three of the sites are in the photo radar areas and three control sites are in non-photo radar sites. The classifier/counters monitor direction, day, time, lane, speed and size of the vehicle. The speeds are collected into one of a number of 5 km/h speed bins and the size is collected into one of four size bins. The results of the analysis on the speed data indicate that speeding on provincial highways has decreased as measured by average speed. A more detailed analysis indicates that the proportion of vehicles exceeding the speed limit has also been reduced. An even larger reduction was found in the highest speed bins and the highways with the highest speeds and most volume. While speeds were down on all highways, the decreases were higher at the test sites than the control sites. The results of the speed analysis, combined with the accumulated literature on the effects of speed and severity of crashes and data on stopping distances, suggest that these changes in speed will translate into lower fatality and injury rates. The analysis of collision data will be done during a later phase of the study. (Author/publisher)
Abstract