Category: WTF?

speed camera

It Could Be A Rant – Speed Cameras

Published on by dgkaye81 Comments

Finally! Talk of getting rid of speed cameras.

I’m going to preface my thoughts about speed cameras by saying, I hate them. Our city of Toronto is a mess in so many ways, but this post is focused on the amount of (almost, inconspicuous) speed cameras going up around town.

First – A waste of money. Sure, maybe a handful of locations of the current 150 of them now, are useful. The first problem is the fact that our WHOLE city, EVERYWHERE is 24/7 congestion. And if it’s not bumper to bumper congestion, it’s man-made congestion by the SLOW POKES this has created in the last couple years. They don’t know speed limits, are afraid of cameras, so too many drive 10 – 20 below the speed limit – always one in each lane so nobody can bypass. It’s so ignorant.

The city is making an inhumane fortune on robo tickets, because in the olden days, when police would actually be on the roads just waiting for a customer to speed and hand us a ticket, there was humanity involved. It used to be pretty much a given that if you weren’t more than ten kilometres over the limit, they wouldn’t even stop us. It’s an ‘unspoken’ thing drivers know that at 100 kilometer max on highways, many (who can) will go to 120 or a tad under and mostly wouldn’t be stopped because they are looking for real speeders. It used to be, if we went over 15 k on the steets there were also demerit points that go on our license for 3 years, and subsequently, passed on to insurance. Depending on the day and the cop, they could lower it to 15, so we learn a lesson, pay a fine, but no points. But those days are sorely missed. These spy machines are like robots, they take in speed and plate numbers and people who’ve never had tickets in their lives getting notified by mail of a fine to pay. And MANY of these charges are for less than 10 over!

Yes, my friend Ameliana, came to the gym one day and was letting off steam about a ticket she got in the mail for going 64 in a 60! Are you kidding me?

Besides all the nit-picking over a few kilometers, and BECAUSE of all the tickets people are getting AND CAN’T AFFORD, people are driving like turtles. There needs to be fines for people going severely under the limits for no reason. It’s not enough that we don’t have enough roads for the amount of people who live here and traffic is always bad, but these sneaky fines have most people driving like snails. Ask anyone who lives here.

Often you can’t even see the speed signs – which change quickly in some parts from a 40 – 60 in a blink of an eye. School zones are 40, but there are signs that add, during September to June only in the school zone. Nobody reads the fine print and won’t go past 40 off season. But most of all, most hardly ever go 40 – including on main streets where it’s 60. I am developing road rage. 🙂 I think the cops should get back on the roads and start giving tickets to the SLOW POKES holding us all up.

My other peeve is 80% of the time while waiting for the left turn arrow, the person in front is busy scrolling on their phones because they can’t not have something to do for 60 seconds, so half the light is gone where 15 cars could easily have turned, if they knew how to drive, instead of 4 or 5 only getting through.

It’s gross! I can’t stand driving. I have lost many of my patience. I have perimeters. My gym is literally up the main street that I live on, about a five minute drive – in the olden days. My classes start at 9:30am and I must be out the door by 9, in order to drive there among the lost sheep, go through the supermarket once there, up the (many) stairs to the women’s gym, get to my class and change my shoes and set up, to make it on time.

I may have digressed there, but since many a citizen have been complaining about and writing to parliament to complain about these continuous fines – for some, as well, a few of the cameras have been hit, run over, hammered down, you name it, it came to light on the news recently that our Premiere Ford (equivalent to a US governor) is siding with the people – despite the revenue it brings as a cash-cow.

Now we do also have red-light cameras at very many red lights, soon to be everywhere, it feels like. I’m all for those. People burning red lights need to learn, despite the odd innocent few who get nabbed because when they first came out, people were wondering what the rules were: are we ticketed if it turned yellow at the line? As we’re going through it? Or does it only catch you going through red. This was a dilemma for many, including myself. Thankfully, I never had one of those, but I used to get anxiety when they first came round my area, if the light was green, but turned yellow after my tires touched the line – should I stop fast or continue through? Seriously. So I kind of got the groove now. But these slow down cameras have to go. I hope Doug Ford gets it passed, as he’s asking for the speed cameras to come down. He called them a cash-grab and unfair to citizens.

Sure, speed kills. But honestly, it’s almost impossible to speed in this city. There’s nothing wrong with putting speed bumps in school zones, or flashing lights to slow down. And if they put police back on the roads, it could give them something to do, bringing back a little compassion and humanity too.

Below is a quick short clip of one of our news channels interviewing people on the steet for their opinions on the cameras – especially two of the same ones that have been broken down 4 times!

Below find the quote from Global News, by Doug Ford:

“This is nothing but a tax grab, folks,” Ford recently proclaimed. Later, the premier offered evidence from the City of Toronto suggesting drivers were being unfairly dinged for minor speeding infractions.

“I’ll use the stats just in Toronto because I know 32,000 tickets for going two kilometres over, four kilometres over, sometimes 10, 15 kilometres over — in three months,” Ford said.

For the full article, which I found interesting because Ford ordered these spy machines in 2019, and he’s the one calling them off, thankfully.

The Ford government legalized speed cameras in 2019. Now, it says they’re a ‘tax grab’

DGKaye2025

WTF

Epic Fail – Dystopia

Published on by dgkaye80 Comments

I lost the whole last Friday. And so did much of Canada. I woke up and began looking through emails – to no avail because once again, no internet. So I turned on the TV to watch the news, only to find blackness on the screen. I thought, not again! Since I moved here I’ve never had so many internet issues since I stupidly left Bell Canada and joined the Rogers network and EVERYTHING – phone, TV, internet is connected by their shit wifi. I tried all my usual unplug, plug in tricks with my devices, which sometimes alleviates the problem. Again – to no avail. At that point, I hadn’t yet checked my mobile phone, which of course always works even when wifi is down because it picks up off the Rogers network cell towers when home wifi is down. But this time I had a dead phone!

At the same moment I began getting curious as to what the hell was going on, my friend Marsha knocked on my door. She came to inform me that Rogers network was down in the whole of Canada! In Canada we have only two giant conglomorate networks that monopolize the country – Rogers with a majority of customers and Bell Canada. And despite the various knock-off carriers that run off these two networks, that’s it. We had no communication to the outside world. Right away I suspected cyber tampering. Plus, I had recently heard on our news that we can expect some cyber attacks, adding that Canada isn’t protected properly with infrastructure to ward them all off. What else could possibly wipe out a whole network in one country?

I asked Marsha how she found out. She told me she knew her neighbor was connected to Bell. She knocked on her door and asked her to call security at our gatehouse and see WTH was going on, and found out. From 5am til wee hours of Saturday morning we were communicationless to the outside world.

I needed to make a few calls Friday to set things ready for my company I had coming Sunday to visit my husband’s grave and come back for lunch. So I got dressed and went up to the 10th floor where I used to live, to knock on a few old neighbor’s doors to see if anyone was on the Bell network. No luck! We were all mystified. I then went down to the convenience store in our building to ask the owner if he had any communications working. He told me his store could only take cash, and even though there was an ATM in his store, the banking system was also shut down, no debit cards, and for many businesses, not even credit cards because of no authorization. Imagine a whole banking system relying on one network!

I decided to go up to the lobby, knowing well there would be people there wondering what was going on. There I saw our building’s cleaners, Simon and Evangeline wiping down the windows. I asked if either of them were on Bell network, and thankfully Evangeline was, and she offered me to use her phone.

During that time, Marsha had gone out searching for wifi, as her daughter calls her every morning and she worried her daughter would worry about her. Marsha heard on the radio that our Starbucks cafes were on the Bell network. I had hoped to get to a Starbucks to send some texts, but one thing led to another as I was cleaning up my place for the weekend. I had the radio on, waiting for reports, as did everyone else, and nothing. Every commercial break announcers could tell us nothing, other than Rogers says they are working on the problem. They also informed that stores could only take cash, some closed, and the chaos at the airport just added to the already madness. People with their boarding passes on phones couldn’t board. All comms were down, and Lord knows how the air traffic controllers were managing. I was grateful to not be on a plane. They also warned not to take any road trips because if a car breaks down, there was no calling for help. AND EVEN 911 emergency line was NO SERVICE. I shuddered at the thought of how many needed an ambulance and died because of this event! It was a dominoe effect of chaos.

After 4pm, I went over to Marsha’s and hung pictures for her, since we were both home and nothing to do. Then she came over to my place and we played Dominoes. We kept checking our phones hoping for them to work, but no dice.

By 8pm, Marsha suggested we drive over to Starbucks to use their wifi to check in with people. Starbucks up the street was a sardine can, full of people, and younger ones hogging all the wifi with their laptops. There were plenty of people, like us, standing outside Starbucks hoping to pick up wifi, to no avail. There were just too many trying to do the same. So we drove to another Starbucks, and again, we couldn’t even get connected.

Finally, I saw a girl walking and texting, I asked her if she could connect and told me it was wonky, but our national pharmacy chain, across the way, Shoppers Drug Mart, was on the Bell Network. By this time it was 10pm, it seemed many didn’t know about this available wifi, and it only took me 10 minutes to connect and I began sending out texts. What a nightmare!

Everyone we’d seen and spoken to that day couldn’t help wondering if this was Russian tampering. How one monopoly network goes totally off the grid was puzzling. I can’t help but wonder if Bell Canada will be next. Were we sabotaged? Was this to show us what they can do? When we STILL have no answers from Rogers and the government has called in the CEO this week for talks, I am suspicious we aren’t being told the truth. Just how fragile are our systems with their vulnerabilites to attack? Not sure we’ll ever get the truth, but two things for sure: Canada better step up our protections, and I am moving back to Bell!

©DGKaye2022