CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Speed Cameras On Residential Streets

Larchmont’s councillors must soon decide whether to install permanent speed cameras on residential streets. The plan envisages 40 automated cameras near schools, parks and seniors’ residences, where the limit was lowered to 40 km/h a couple of years back. As with parking violations, fines would be mailed to the vehicle’s registered owner, and no demerit points would be assessed.

It follows a twelve-month pilot in which six cameras rotated between locations. According to a municipal report, the proportion of drivers speeding in test zones plummeted from roughly half to fewer than one in five. The cameras also generated $2.1 million in fines, comfortably exceeding their operating costs.

“Every camera would sit where children or elderly residents cross,” says Councillor Priya Dhaliwal, the motion’s sponsor. A pedestrian struck at 50 km/h is far likelier to die than one struck at 30. “If a camera persuades someone to ease off the accelerator, that could be a life saved.”

Staff Sergeant Leo Marchand of the Larchmont Police Service concurs. “We get far more speeding complaints than we could ever investigate. A camera doesn’t sleep, and it liberates my officers for other calls.”

Ray Kowalchuk, whose courier company runs nine vans, is decidedly less charitable, branding the cameras “a cash grab dressed up as safety.” Because tickets go to the owner, his business would bear the cost of its drivers’ lapses with no means of proving who was behind the wheel. That two-million-dollar haul, he insinuates, explains its appetite for forty more.

Dr. Hannah Lisowski, a road-safety researcher at a local university, considers the evidence for cameras strong, but only up to a point. “Drivers decelerate where they know a camera’s watching and accelerate a few blocks later.” Once cameras disappear, speeds typically rebound. Narrower lanes, raised crosswalks and speed bumps, by contrast, alter behaviour permanently by making speeding uncomfortable, not merely expensive.

Tamara Rees, whose children walk to Maple Hill Public School along a street lacking a sidewalk on one side, supports the cameras but wants assurances. Every dollar collected, in her view, should fund crossing guards, sidewalks and safer crossings instead of vanishing into the general budget.

A meeting for residents is scheduled for April 9.

I drove a Larchmont school bus for twenty-two years, and speeding on side streets has never been worse. Mr. Kowalchuk regards the cameras as 6. Choose…an invasion of privacya gift to the policea threat to licencesa cash cow for City Hall; I regard them as a tax on impatience. As for his complaint that he could never say who was at the wheel, any firm with nine vans can surely 7. Choose…log who’s behind the wheelteach staff to slow downcontest every ticket in courtreroute around school zones.

Cameras alone, though, are no cure. As Dr. Lisowski warns, drivers tend to 8. Choose…seek out other routesbrake hard at the camerareturn to usual speedsdispute their fines once a camera is behind them, and on my old route only 9. Choose…a larger sign showing the limitsomething physical in the roada parked police cruisera warning letter ever slowed people for good.

So yes to the cameras, on one condition: like Ms. Rees, I want the proceeds 10. Choose…refunded to ticketed driversspent on more officersearmarked for safer walking routesfolded into general revenue, so that the cameras pay for improvements that will still be working long after they are gone.