ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½

But six times? Come on. This criminal conceptual-art project is inane now, like that was just a static shot of the Empire State Building for eight hours. Or like a kid who tells the same knock-knock joke a hundred times over. When someone thinks they’re being very clever, your patience eventually starts to run out.

Recently, I admit that I was exasperated to receive two automated speed-camera tickets in the mail in one week. They were for going 11 and 12 kilometres per hour over the limit on streets in Brampton and Mississauga. They were expensive enough to tick me off.

So here’s what I did: I paid them. And not for one single moment did I see those tickets as the basis for some supervillain origin story culminating in a vandalistic crime spree.

Yet that’s what appears to have happened with someone out there. Or someones. Six times the Parkside camera has been cut down since November, and at least five other cameras around the city were disabled in just a couple of days last month.

No doubt this criminal mastermind — or gang of criminal masterminds, as the case may be — thinks what they’re doing is harmless.  ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ drivers may even be tempted to see them as the Robin Hood of the road. That’s how I felt at first, when I opened those tickets recently: Only 11 or 12 over the limit? That’s not dangerous! That’s normal! Right?

It’s true: that is normal, and that’s precisely the problem these cameras are trying to solve. Even going slightly too fast can be dangerous.  that increments of just 10 kilometres per hour can make to road safety: a pedestrian hit by a car at 30 kilometres per hour has a 90 per cent chance of surviving; at 40, that goes down to 60 per cent, and at 50, there’s a mere 20 per cent chance of survival.

And it’s not as if these crashes are theoretical: on Parkside Drive, which is only two kilometres long, there have been 1,500 collisions over the past 10 years, with 21 pedestrians and 30 cyclists hit. Two seniors in a car were killed there in 2021, which is what led to the camera being introduced in the first place.

It’s worth noting that the travel time for the entire length of the street increases by only one minute if you go the speed limit of 40 rather than 50 — and likely less than that, as the red lights along the route eat into any time saved by moving faster.

After I paid my tickets, I started reminding myself to watch my speed while driving. Not just to save money, but also to make it less likely that I’ll kill someone. Which I consider to be a good thing, overall. That should be the normal reaction, and it’s the reason why show they work.

But the Serial Camera Slasher is insistent on preventing drivers from getting that reminder to slow down and save lives. Police say the culprit, if they’re ever caught, will likely be charged with mischief. I was going to suggest that a more severe charge might be warranted, but the innocuous-sounding mischief  if the offence “causes actual danger to life.� If instead it causes only property damage, the perpetrator can still get 10 years in the slammer.

So maybe the potential punishment already fits the crime, and it’s just a matter of catching the criminal. But our failure to do that is starting to seem as absurd as the repeated act itself.

The last time the city reinstalled the Parkside camera, it also installed a separate surveillance camera to watch it. Police say they plan to survey the footage and see if it contains anything useful. If not, we may need more dramatic protection for ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½â€™s most targeted piece of safety infrastructure.

Given how quickly the slasher has reacted to each reinstallation, it doesn’t seem as if a round-the-clock stakeout would take long to pay off. Or maybe the city could install a fence around the camera’s pole to keep kids out and then electrify the pole to injure anyone who tampers with it. Or they could rig up a booby trap, one of those spring-loaded nets you always see in cartoons and on reality TV shows (bonus: this would make for a hilarious picture if it worked).

Authorities have to do something if they don’t want to look completely incompetent, don’t they?

Of course, many residents of Parkside Drive are less concerned with catching the perp than they are with simply slowing cars down to make the street safer.

Speed bumps could do the job. And they’d be a heck of a lot harder to remove under cover of night.