Toronto removed its speed cameras and speeding “jumped 480%” — but the real math tells a calmer story

Toronto’s latest traffic report reveals a sharp rise in speeding after the city scrapped its automated speed enforcement program in November 2025. The data shows speeds increased at 101 of 104 monitored locations, with the most dramatic percentage hikes grabbing headlines. Drivers traveling 16 km/h (10 mph) or more above the limit on roads posted at 50 km/h (31.1 mph) or higher rose from 0.5% to 2.9% — a 480% jump in relative terms. Yet in absolute terms, that’s just a 2.4 percentage-point increase. The average operating speed across all sites climbed by only 4.8 km/h (3 mph). Traffic safety experts caution that even small speed increases can worsen stopping distances and crash severity, but the city’s fatality data for December 2025 to May 2026 shows 25 deaths — identical to the same six-month period in 2021–2022 when cameras were active. The report warns that six months is too short a window to draw firm conclusions. Critics argue the cameras mask underlying road design issues, suggesting some arterials like Finch, Steeles, and Bathurst may encourage speeds above posted limits. The debate now centers on whether enforcement is fixing behavior or compensating for infrastructure that implicitly rewards faster driving.