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B.C.’s 2022 budget commits $9.5 million to road safety initiatives.
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B.C. investing in road safety
Published 10:23 PDT, Fri March 18, 2022
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The B.C. government is investing in road safety in a bid to improve efficiency, reduce backlogs, and provide better services.
Budget 2022 commits $9.5 million for the 2022-23 fiscal year to RoadSafetyBC's ongoing modernization, supporting community and law enforcement partners, and creating safer roads.
"Ensuring this funding for road safety measures is available makes our roads safer and provides people with streamlined and more efficient digital services," said Mike Farnworth, Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General. "Strategic automated enforcement through intersection safety cameras at locations linked to crashes and dangerous speeds has widespread support because it is changing driver behaviours and cutting down on potentially tragic outcomes."
Budget 2022 includes funding for the following RoadSafetyBC initiatives:
• Intersection Safety Cameras (ISC) program, which has speed enforcement technology that provides robust and reliable automated intersection safety enforcement 24/7 at B.C.'s high-risk intersections.
• Driver Medical Fitness Transformation project, which seeks to modernize B.C.'s driver fitness process over the upcoming year, including through automation, electronic driver medical forms and streamlined case management.
• Road Safety Initiative, which is developing digital roadside tools, such as electronic traffic ticketing and online fine payment, allowing people to access services more conveniently.
Key changes to the Driver Medical Fitness Program will also deliver service improvements: an online medical practitioner's self-service tool; a simplified process for completing and submitting documentation; and shorter processing times. In addition, ICBC and RoadSafetyBC call centres will have improved access to information to better support people. These modernizations will reduce backlogs and enable faster removal of unsafe drivers from B.C.'s roads.
B.C.'s highest-risk intersections have had automated speed enforcement in place for the past two years. The last of 35 high-risk intersections to be equipped with automated speed enforcement was activated in Nanaimo in September 2020. According to an ICBC survey conducted in fall 2021, 77 per cent of British Columbians support red light cameras and 72 per cent support speed cameras at high-risk intersections.
Enforcement appears to be changing driver behaviour at high-risk intersections throughout the province. In 2021, 46,700 speed tickets were issued province-wide, down from 72,546 in 2020.
People are also benefiting from the ability to make online ticket payments: 59 per cent of ISC violation tickets were paid online in 2021.
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