CELPIP Listening Part 6 Practice Test: Speed Cameras on City Streets

NARRATOR: Few municipal policies provoke quite as much irritation as the automated speed camera. Mounted on a pole, it photographs any vehicle exceeding the limit, and a ticket turns up in the owner's mailbox a couple of weeks later. Across Canada, city councils have been weighing whether such devices belong on their streets, and the debate has grown surprisingly heated.

NARRATOR: Helen Okafor, a transportation researcher, regards the question as largely settled by the evidence. In one mid-sized city she studied, average speeds in school zones dropped by about a third within a year. That matters enormously, she points out, because a pedestrian struck at fifty kilometres an hour is far less likely to survive than one struck at thirty. Police, in her view, simply can't patrol every residential block, and a camera doesn't care who is behind the wheel. It pulls nobody over and forms no impression of anybody's appearance, which she considers a genuine improvement in fairness. It would take a stubborn listener to dismiss those numbers outright.

NARRATOR: Brandon Leclerc, a former city councillor, is unmoved. Having lost a neighbour to a speeding driver, he hardly needs persuading that speed kills; his quarrel is with the remedy. A ticket delivered weeks afterward, he contends, teaches nothing, since most drivers can't even recall the trip in question. Because the fine follows the licence plate, a wealthy repeat offender simply pays up and carries on. Worse, he argues, cities tend to install cameras on broad, fast roads where tickets are plentiful rather than on the streets where people actually get hurt, which leaves an unmistakable impression of a municipal cash machine. His preferred solution is physical: narrower lanes, raised crosswalks and curbs that make speeding uncomfortable, whether or not anyone is watching.

NARRATOR: Okafor's rejoinder is largely practical. Rebuilding a street can take a decade and cost millions, whereas a camera can be running within months, and children are walking to school now. Her own data show some drivers braking at the camera and accelerating again a block later, which is why she would confine cameras to school zones and dedicate every dollar of the revenue to road redesign. That proposal ought to appeal to both camps, though one suspects councils accustomed to the income may be slow to embrace it. Cameras may not be the elegant answer, but until the streets themselves are rebuilt, they look like a reasonable place to begin.