On a winter day in 2024, in a suburban town near Pudua, Italy, commuters woke up to a surprise: A speed camera, lowered by an angle grinder, carrying the message “Fleximan is coming.”
After a number of Copycat Speech Camera attacks, the fleximan name has acquired a kind of legendary status in Italy.
“He was considered a local hero,” said Tom Roper, an English school owner who has lived in the district for 15 years. “I’ve had people call me, asking, ‘Do you know fleximan?'”
But the flianess of Fleximan’s Vigilante Actions hides a surprisingly wide consensus, throughout Europe, that the speed camera is not only effective but very much in demand.
“If you ask citizens, the support for enforcement is quite high,” said Jenny Carson, project manager at the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), in Belgium. “People want the speed to be reduced.”
Italy, home to more than 10,000 active speed cameras – most of Europe – is proof of this trend. A FREE ENERGY AWAKENING PROGRAM It has been shown that almost 70 percent of Italians in Italy are supported by acceleration – although almost 50 percent say that they continued in the last 30 days.
At the time when Ontario Premier Doug Ford went to war with speed cameras – he called them “Money Catches Him” again threatening to shut down technology Obviously – it is worth asking the question: How is it that Europe is able to generate widespread support for automatic enforcement and to implement a system that can save thousands of lives every year?
The temptation of France
In 2002, after A series of high traffic accidentsFrench President Jacques Chirac promised to make reducing traffic deaths a policy of his government. Today, the country has more than 2,400 cameras in operation.
Laurent Carnis, an expert on vehicle safety in France at the Université Gustave Eiffel, said France offers Canada a bad lesson: The extensive construction of a system like theirs requires high buy-in.
“It’s very important to have political commitment,” he said.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says his Government will introduce a law that will ban speed cameras, and instead establish a provincial fund to help municipalities put in place other “effective ways to calm traffic.”
In France, that commitment helped to create the centralized systems needed to pay fines against drivers from all over the country, and beyond.
Like other countries in Europe, France has also been treated with speed cameras as an opportunity to teach as a tool of enforcement.
It used two types of cameras: programmed, pre-installed, to train drivers to expect automatic enforcement; And mobile phones, used to penalize the speeds that try to process the system.
“The first is for protection, the second is for the second,” Carnis said. “This is a prevention idea. And it works well.”
Across Europe, similar programs have resulted in speed reductions of 10 km/h or more, with road accidents falling anywhere from 20 to 7 to 70 percent.
“We estimate that a thousand lives, and many injuries, were avoided,” Carnas said.
‘Like a vaccine’
This is the way to get results in Canada, where municipalities report Average speed reduction of 20 km / h or more near speed cameras.
But experts say the immediate impact has other dimensions. With the highest number of fasts completed almost overnight, Carnis said, “what’s left is … ‘small actions.'”
Carnis says that it is possible that it is the growing opposition of Speed Cameras in France, which has recently seen the power of destruction about 75 percent of the network.
“People started saying, ‘He’s a money boy,'” he explained. “It’s like a vaccine – [when it works] The number of people affected is low and low, so some people conclude that we should stop vaccinating. “
That kind of is one of the reasons Harnis advises governments to be selective — and obvious — about who they target with speed cameras.
“When we first installed speed cameras, I wanted them to be placed at 20 miles [32 km] an hour [over the limit] or something,” said Richard Recong, a traffic safety expert who helped launch North America’s first traffic cameras, in New York City.” If you focus on the sellers who move the fastest, you build more community support. “
That has been central to Ford’s criticism of Ontario’s Speech Camera Programs. He said the drivers were aiming unfairly By going five or 10 kilometers over the limit – despite the thresholds it is actually set to 11 km/h moreand several of his Cabinet ministers He matured in three times.
“People who have traditionally been able to avoid the application of the law are sensitive to this issue,” he said. “Finally, one of the arguments against automatic enforcement is that it doesn’t discriminate. And it’s a big argument about it.”
Too fast – or too slow?
But Canada’s problems with speed may run deeper. Seats and carnis both suppress that before Speed cameras are used, speed limits should actually be reasonable.
Learn later on learn He pointed out that the wide lanes and ample shoulders common to Canadian road construction often encourage high speeds. And as cars and their safety features have evolved, drivers have been largely removed from traffic accidents, and many feel safer breaking the speed limit.
“You must make sure, before using the speed limit, [that] The speed limit is visible,” said Carnis.
But even that may not stop the opponents of Speed Cameras.
In Italy, where the roads are often narrow and full of traffic, and the speed cameras are already indicated on the GPS, the fleximan’s Vigilantism has promoted the Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. delete the existing system.
This shows that – among politicians, at least – Europe-wide support for speed cameras may be starting to crumble.
Roper, a school owner in Italy, has been ticketed by a speed camera several times in the decades he’s driven across Europe. But he’s gaining confidence among tech advocates.
“The drivers here are mental,” he said. “You have to find some way to control the madness.”
