Cops Crack Down On Speeders
Posted July 11, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Six hundred speeding tickets in 41 days might not seem like a lot – until you consider that they were all handed out on the same stretch of downtown road.
Police have been making an extra effort to nab lead-footed motorists on Mount Pleasant Road to prevent it from turning into a north-south speedway.
Cab driver Tahir Khan was killed in January when a car alleged to be street racing slammed into his taxi near the intersection of Mount Pleasant and St. Clair Ave.
The speed limit in that area has since been reduced from 60 km/h to 50 km/h, but drivers don’t appear to be easing up on the gas as the ticket numbers have proven.
“It’s significant but not unheard of,” Sgt. Brian Bowman of Toronto Police Traffic Services said of the number of tickets handed out to drivers. “The speed limit has changed here so we expect to see a little blip while people start to fall into compliance.”
Mount Pleasant Rd. isn’t the only area of the city being targeted by traffic enforcement officials this season, Bowman says.
“Traditional areas along the lake shore, Ontario Place, the Exhibition, we see high speeds there,” he maintains.
“When you’re exiting the Gardiner (Expressway) onto Lake Shore Blvd., that’s a problematic area. Also Kingston Rd., coming through the east end of the city. We see speeds that are too high above what people should be driving in those areas. And we continually target (them).”
Bowman says he and his fellow officers often see motorists driving at 20 to 30 kilometres per hour above the posted speed limit, but says enforcement happens at lower speeds than that in order to encourage drivers to comply with the rules of the road.
