(Ban the Cams note:  IF THEY ARE SO CONFIDENT IN THEIR "POLL", WHY DONT WE JUST LET THE VOTERS VOTE!  After all if the poll is "honest", than the scamera side should not have any fears,,,,,,"

Any bets the study will claim photo enforcment will "work",,,,  Like Atlanta, what was that INCREASE IN ACCIDENTS HMMM).

Poll details, please
Don’t blindly accept spin on photo radar

By TOM BRODBECK, Winnipeg Sun

Last Updated: May 27, 2010 7:34am.

The poll is part of an overall assessment of Winnipeg’s photo enforcement program commissioned by the Winnipeg Police Service and paid for by taxpayers.

The assessment has been plagued with lengthy delays over the past few years, including a 2009 completion date that was missed, which has since been pushed back to late 2010.

Responding to criticism of that in this column, the TIRF and WPS issued a press release praising the effectiveness of photo enforcement, lauding its so-called widespread public support and defending the delays of the assessment report.

Yet, amazingly, they won’t release a copy of the public opinion poll, they won’t tell us who performed the survey and they refused to disclose how much it costs.

Were respondents asked about photo radar or intersection cameras, or both? It’s an important distinction. Were they asked questions like: “Do you believe photo radar is designed more for revenue reasons or for safety ones?”

We don’t know, because they won’t release the poll.

The press release goes on to cite “studies” in other jurisdictions that prove photo enforcement works.

“While some have raised concerns about the effectiveness of photo enforcement programs, a review of the literature, completed in 2009, shows that there is ample evidence that photo enforcement does have an overall positive effect,” the press release says. “These include studies completed in Ontario, California, Virginia, British Columbia, Arizona, Singapore, and Victoria, Australia.” Yet they won’t disclose the specifics of those studies so we can read them ourselves.

“Many of the studies we reviewed found significant decreases in average speed, speeding violations, red light running violations, speeding collisions, and right-angle crashes, with some studies finding minor increases in rear-end crashes, which are often much less severe than right-angle crashes,” said TIRF lead researcher Ward Vanlaar in the press release.

Great. Break out the studies so we can have a look at them ourselves. I’m dying to see the proof that parking photo radar vehicles on Pembina Highway, Portage Avenue and McPhillips Street and ticketing people on Sunday mornings doing 74 in a 60 reduces collisions and injuries.

I look forward to that data.

In the meantime, I’m not going to blindly accept unsubstantiated poll findings, crash data or any other conclusions until I see the raw statistics and polling questions myself.

This is a classic case of “just trust us.” WPS brass and TIRF seem to be more concerned about how they’re going to spin all this data than what the data actually says.

In fact, it appears TIRF has already made up its mind about how wonderful photo radar and red light cameras are even though they haven’t completed their study. That’s very worrisome for an assessment process that is supposed to be independent and evidence-based.

Since the WPS and TIRF have already opened up a can of worms about a public opinion poll and studies in other jurisdictions, they should at least make those parts of the assessment public immediately, even if they don’t release the rest of the report until later this year.

If they don’t, it proves Wednesday’s press release was little more than a public relations exercise.

For more, visit Brodbeck’s blog Raise a Little Hell at winnipegsun.com. Reach Tom by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
 

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