Quebec to put photo radar on highways in fall

Quebec says photo radar will be installed at 15 key intersections on highways across the province, with the possibility of expanding the program later. But a traffic expert says it will do nothing but clog up the courts.

Premier Jean Charest said Tuesday that Quebec drivers need a wake-up call.

Charest called dangerous driving a cultural problem in the province. As proof of the needto change drivers' habits, he pointed tothe 32 fatal road accidents during the provincial construction holiday,a legislated two-week vacation for the construction industrythat started July 18.

Photo radar allows police to track the speed of a vehicle on radar, take a picture of the licence plate and issue a ticket to the owner of the vehicle.

But Jordan Charness, a lawyer who specializes intraffic laws, sees many problems with the idea.

For one, he said, the owner of the car will receive the fine, but there's no way to know if he or she was actually driving the vehicle when it passed the radar.

"So now you have the wrong people being punished, the wrong sanctions and the opportunity of misuse of the system. If a police officer had pulled over the driver speeding, that driver would have gotten the ticket," Charness said.

He predicted many people would fightthe fines, which would clog up Quebec's judicial system.

"Lawyers like us are going to go to court and challenge them. And we're going to challenge them on several different fronts. Number 1, of course, it's a machine maybe it was broken. Number 2, maybe it wasn't aimed properly. Number 3, maybe it wasn't calibrated etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

"Some of those challenges are going to succeed, some of them won't. But what will happen is the court system will get clogged by more and more people going to court to fight the machine," Charness said.

The government's plan calls for the photo radar sites to be installed in the fall.

Signs will be posted and warning tickets will be issued before the official fines begin arriving in the mail in 2009.