RCMP trade up technology to catch speeders

RCMP officers in Nova Scotia are learning how to use laser technology to catch speeders.

With summertime traffic on Maritime roads picking up, the RCMP are hoping to make them a little bit safer.

“When we start looking at road safety, we start looking at the causal factors associated with serious injuries and fatal motor vehicle collisions,” says Const. Mark Skinner. “Speeding is one of the four major factors that keeps coming up again, and again, and again.”

The three other factors are distracted driving, no seatbelts, and impaired driving.

Over the past six years, there have been 236 crashes that resulted in a serious injury in Nova Scotia, with another 106 that were fatal.

The RCMP say their new LIDAR guns are a major upgrade on older radar guns.

Both can reach distances of a thousand meters, but the LIDAR uses laser technology and a crosshair to track a vehicle's distance and speed, allowing the officer to follow one vehicle that stands out from the rest - a task that was much more challenging with radar.

“The big advantage with LIDAR over radar simply is that this is target and lane selective where the radar beam is much wider,” says Skinner.

If reducing danger on Maritime roads isn't enough to deter a driver from speeding, the hefty fines could be convincing. Tickets range from $230 to just over $400 and excessive speeding could cost the driver their license, or even their ride.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Matt Woodman