Winnipeg drivers experiencing road rage over photo radar tickets

A Winnipeg intersection has become a corner of contention between city police and two advocacy groups.

Wise-Up Winnipeg and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) have teamed up to urge drivers not to pay photo radar speeding tickets issued in the area around Grant Avenue and Nathaniel Street.

As the Winnipeg Free Press reports, the two groups contend that a large number of tickets have been wrongly issued by the city's photo radar speed trap.

Both the CTF and Wise-Up say they've received complaints from over 100 drivers who got slapped with tickets since the end of October, with each driver confounded as to how he or she could have taken the corner westbound onto Grant Avenue at anywhere between 65 — 85 km/hr.

"It doesn't make sense," said CTF Prairie Director Colin Craig in a release on the group's website. "How could so many people be measured at 65 to 85kms/hr on that stretch after just turning onto the road? In the case of my ticket, I don't think my Corolla could physically get up to 67kms/hr in that short distance of less than 100 yards."

Though photo radar has been enforced more successfully around other local intersections, the camera set up at Grant and Nathaniel reportedly sits on a parallel service road and measures speed from 46 feet away. Many believe this position to be the cause for all the alleged speeding ticket blights.

"Due to that and other factors related to origin of radar in relation to target, mobile photo enforcement measurements have been proven to be inherently unreliable. Hence, many vehicle owners are receiving tickets stating they were driving faster than they were. That is the constant in the very many contacts received from the public over the last week regarding this particular location," said Todd Dube, a spokesman for Wise-Up Winnipeg.

Wise-Up Winnipeg, a hardline non-profit group targeting the city's photo enforcement program, writes on their website that the city is "engaged in a deliberate and dangerous campaign to induce photo-enforcement violations and siphon your hard earned [money]."

They plan to have a radar expert present during one of the ticket trials to attest to the unreliability of radar photo enforcement reflections