'This is about safety': Speeding, dangerous driving renews calls for vehicle seizures
Fatal crashes involving speed have become a deadly trend on Edmonton streets.
"Traffic safety is extremely important. The numbers are high here, they're trending higher this year," said Edmonton Police Chief Dale McFee.
Some drivers have been taking to social media to brag about their bad driving behaviour, posting videos of sports cars and motorcycles lane splitting and driving at excessive speeds.
"This exchange of videos, that 'look what I got away with, well look what I'm doing', it's this incremental thing that's happening that it's really unsafe," said Edmonton City Councillor Tim Cartmell.
"At that level of speed the consequences are very, very serious for everybody involved," he added.
Edmonton's top cop calls it a "ridiculous" problem that police need help to address.
Alberta is one of the few provinces without the ability to seize a vehicle traveling 50 km/h over the speed limit.
"A fine isn't the answer," McFee said.
"What we do know from the evidence is that we gotta try something different," he added.
The chief has lobbied the province in the past to change the Traffic Safety Act to give officers more tools to deal with excessive speed and dangerous drivers.
"It's proven in multiple provinces that the vehicle is the best thing to actually focus on because they can get another vehicle but that gets expensive quickly so that is one of the things we think is a solution," he said.
In Alberta, police are only able to seize and impound a vehicle if it's part of a crime – not for speeding alone.
A former police chief and British Columbia's former Solicitor General successfully pushed for similar changes more than a decade ago to address street racing.
"We recognized that excessive fines weren't necessarily changing the behaviour," said Kash Heed, who is now a Richmond City Councillor.
He said penalties for speeding and street racing get progressively harsher for each offence and in extreme cases can lead to civil forfeiture.
"What I found in all of my years experience was that seizing the vehicle has a little bit of a deterrence but actually seizing the vehicle and then selling that vehicle had a significant deterrence in the individuals behaviour," Heed said.
A tool Heed said had a major impact in metro Vancouver.
"This is not Big Brother coming after you, this is the law coming after you for your irresponsible behaviour where you're putting people at risk," he said.
McFee wants officers here to have the power to seize a vehicle for going 50 km/h or more over the posted speed limits.
"There needs to be a practical application of how the officers can actually prevent these offences from happening," said McFee.
"It's proven in multiple provinces that the vehicle is the best thing to actually focus on," he added.
Cartmell agrees there needs to be changes made to the Alberta Traffic Safety Act but said the province has not shown much interest in doing it.
"How to convince the province that speeding is a problem, enforcement is a problem, more severe penalties is part of the solution set, at the same time they're actually taking solution sets out of the equation, I'm not sure how to get the message across," Cartmell said.
Cartmell referring to upcoming limits on where photo radar will be allowed.
According to a recent memo to Edmonton city council, nearly 90 per cent of traffic deaths happened on roads where photo radar will be banned, more than half said to be caused by speed.
"I get that some are trying to look at photo enforcement just based on money, for us this isn't about money, this is about safety. Look at how many fatalities we had," said McFee.
CTV News Edmonton reached out to the province for comment on the issue but have not yet received a response.
With files from CTV News Edmonton's Jeremy Thompson.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
'They're never going to see me cry': Michael Kovrig shares experience of more than 1,000 days in Chinese detainment
It's been exactly three years since Canadian Michael Kovrig returned to Canada after spending 1,019 days in a Chinese prison. Now, he's publicly speaking out about his arrest and detainment for the first time.
Cineplex ordered to pay $38.9M by Competition Tribunal in ticket fee case
Cineplex Inc. has been ordered to pay a record $38.9 million fine after the Competition Tribunal found the theatre owner guilty of deceptive marketing practices.
Is COVID XEC worse than other variants? Experts share what's known about the virus in Canada
While many Canadians no longer stress as much about COVID-19 as they did during its peak, health experts say a new variant has been spreading in some parts of the world and is now present in Canada.
Police investigating sudden death of 2-year-old boy in Cambridge, Ont.
Police say a toddler in Cambridge, Ont., who was reported missing early Monday morning, has since died.
Israeli strikes kill 492 in Lebanon's deadliest day of conflict since 2006
Israeli strikes on Lebanon Monday killed more than 490 people, including more than 90 women and children, Lebanese authorities said, in the deadliest barrage since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.
Calgary men guilty in multimillion-dollar fraud case involving B.C. RV resort
On Sept. 20, Justice R.E. Nation of the Alberta Court of King's Bench found Craig McMorran guilty of fraud, money laundering and stealing a cottage from its rightful owners.
WestJet ordered to pay passengers $2K after offering only $16 for flight diversion
B.C.’s Civil Resolution Tribunal has ordered WestJet to refund a family in full for their diverted flight and compensate them for associated costs.
Lockdown notice issued for residents near Port of Montreal due to lithium battery fire
The City of Montreal has issued a lockdown notice for residents in the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough due to smoke from a fire in a container storing 15,000 kilograms of lithium batteries in the Port of Montreal.
Thousands of bones and hundreds of weapons reveal grisly insights into a 3,250-year-old battle
A new analysis of dozens of arrowheads is helping researchers piece together a clearer portrait of the warriors who clashed on Europe’s oldest known battlefield 3,250 years ago.