A public-data analysis of every Watch Your Speed radar sign in the city — 819 cross-comparable signs in all — finds an additional 4.1 million vehicles measured driving more than 10 km/h over the posted limit between January and June this year, compared with the same period a year earlier. The closer a sign sat to a former enforcement camera, the bigger the jump.
Across the 819 radar signs that reported in both windows, the share of measured vehicles travelling at least 10 km/h over the posted limit rose from 9.17% to 10.34%.
+10.6%
more "10+ over" speeders, Jan–Jun 2026 vs 2025
17,678,572
vehicles measured 10+ km/h over the limit, Jan–Jun 2026
15,986,397
in the same window in 2025 — a difference of +1,692,175
Same signs, same months, year over year. The Watch Your Speed signs Toronto installs in safety zones log every vehicle that passes, 24 hours a day, and report monthly aggregates by 5 km/h speed bin. The analysis here only counts signs that reported in both windows, so the comparison is apples-to-apples.
Speeding normally drops as the year turns cold — fewer pedestrians, more snow, slower commutes. In the same window a year earlier, the city-wide rate fell 1.93 percentage points. This year, it rose 1.54. Both versus the previous July–October baseline at the same signs.
Subtract the seasonal slowdown a 2024 control predicts, and the camera-ban era sits +3.47 percentage points above where the trend says it should be.
The vertical dashed line marks November 2025, when Ontario banned automated speed enforcement. The two shaded bands are the July–October "pre" window and the December–March "post" window used for the difference-in-differences calculation. The same windows were measured in 2024 to control for seasonality.
The rise isn't only among drivers nudging a few km/h over the limit. At every tier — 10+, 15+, 20+, 25+, even 30+ km/h over — the count of speeders climbed.
Tier counts are cumulative ("20+ over" includes 25+, 30+, etc.). Jan–Jun 2026 against the same window in 2025, restricted to the 819 signs that reported in both periods.
Twenty-four of Toronto's twenty-five wards show a positive DiD-adjusted change. Only one — Ward 23 Scarborough North — is statistically flat. Etobicoke Centre (Ward 2) and Willowdale (Ward 18) are the worst-hit, each pushing past +9 percentage points after stripping out seasonality.
All 25 wards ranked. The DiD-adjusted change subtracts 2024's seasonal pattern at the same signs, so what's left is the slice plausibly attributable to whatever happened during the camera-ban window.
A spatial difference-in-differences — comparing radar signs by how far they sit from a former ASE camera location — reveals a clean dose-response. Signs within 250 m of a former camera saw a larger pre/post change than signs 250–500 m away. Beyond 500 m the comparison stops being meaningful (a sign isn't really being "treated" by a camera kilometres away), so it isn't reported.
It isn't proof. But it is the cleanest pattern the data can produce: enforcement zones are exactly the places where drivers sped up most when enforcement disappeared.
ASE locations published by the City include both formerly-active and planned points, and the City does not publish install or removal dates. "Near a former ASE camera" should be read as "near a location the City designated for automated enforcement," not a guarantee enforcement was historically active.
Aggregated across all 819 cross-comparable signs, the distribution of measured speeds moved upward in every bin above the posted limit — while the same window in 2024 showed the opposite, the normal seasonal pull toward lower speeds.
Each line shows the share of measured vehicles in each 5 km/h speed bin during a 4-month window. The two solid 2025 lines straddle the camera ban; the dotted 2024 lines bracket the equivalent windows a year earlier and show the normal seasonal pattern (winter slower than summer). In 2025–26 that pattern reverses.
In April 2026, Safe Parkside — a Toronto residents' group advocating for road safety on Parkside Drive — published an analysis of speeding on the street, drawn from the same City dataset. Their headline: vehicles travelling 60+ km/h on the 40 km/h street rose from 3,417 to 11,439 between Jan–Apr 2025 and the same window in 2026 — a 235% increase. Their numbers got local media coverage. The analysis was then carried to a wider audience by u/SafeStreetsTO on r/toronto, under the headline "Speeding on Parkside Drive has increased by over 200% since Doug Ford's speed camera ban, 'Watch Your Speed' data reveals." Both posts inspired this tool.
Run the methodology on the same sign in this dashboard, and the number reproduces exactly: 3,417 → 11,439, +234.8%.
The same lookup is available for every Watch Your Speed sign in Toronto. The dashboard linked below lets any reader, journalist, or resident type in their own street and see whether the local pattern matches the city-wide story — or doesn't. Safe Parkside's Facebook group is at facebook.com/groups/safeparkside; the r/toronto thread is here.
A reasonable objection: if traffic itself rose, raw counts of speeders would rise mechanically. So is this just more vehicles on the road?
+0.8%
change in total vehicle volume, post-ban window vs pre-ban window 2025
+6.1%
change in the equivalent 2024 windows, where speeding fell
Total traffic on these signs was essentially flat across the camera-ban transition; in 2024, when speeding was naturally declining into winter, traffic was actually growing more than seven times faster than it has this year. The speeding rise is a behavioural shift, not an exposure shift.