As more drivers steer clear of roads, Edmonton says excessive speeding is up

Speeding up in Edmonton during pandemic The City of Edmonton says it is catching more speeders now that there are less vehicles on the road.

Edmonton — The City of Edmonton says it's seeing more drivers speeding, likely as a result of the fewer amount of cars on the road due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

"We’re seeing an uptick in speeding everywhere but in particular some of those extreme behaviour are showing themselves on our big roads like Henday, Whitemud, Yellowhead where people are going way faster than is safe to be going," said Jessica Lamarre, Acting Director for Traffic Safety for the city.

The city says despite a 30 per cent decrease in vehicles on the roads last week, the number of exceeding posted speed limits by more than 20 km/h increased by 30 per cent.

"Especially in light of everything going on, it’s really important were not overburdening our health and police services with things like extra collisions or needing to monitor people’s speed behaviour on the roads," she said.

She also reminded drivers that just because school is out, speed limits in playground zones are not decreased.

"Those speed limits are by bylaw so they don’t change just because school is not in place."

The city also cited a 200 per cent increase in the drivers going more than 50 km/h over the speed limit.

Photo radar units will continue to be deployed as usual during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the city.

"We’re not increasing the number of hours we’re on the road. We’re just paying particular attention to where we’re seeing those significant increases in speeding, and readjusting our scheduling to make sure we’re more present in those locations to remind drivers to slow down."

With files from CTV news Edmonton's Nicole Weisberg