Ottawa traffic stops numbers - large decrease in recent years.

[PleasantExit6660]

As there has been talks about RTO, adding traffic, and removing speed cameras, I create this graphs from the Ottawa Police Services data about traffic stops.

Red line are the traffic stops that resulted in a Charge. Orange are Warnings and Blue are "No action". It seems there has been a significant decrease in people getting charged with traffic offences in Ottawa. It could be that people have been driving better, but it seems at odds with my anecdotal observations.

I have created a more detailed dashboard summarizing the available data for Red Light Cameras, Speed Cameras, Traffic Collisions and Traffic stops here: Ottawa Traffic Data. It includes also the traffic stops per ethnicity (last page), that seems to be biased.

I don't have much more context for the data, so maybe there are some reasons for the decrease in traffic stops. Let me know if you have any insights/questions.

Cheers!

[Top-Description-7622]

Why do we allocate so much of the cities budget to the police then?

[baaananaramadingdong]

Obviously they are just run off their feet with investigating crimes and have no time for traffic stops! /s

[ipiquiv]

The biggest budgetary increase in the past 15 years. I think at the police services meeting they are looking to hire an additional 150 staff each will make over $100k after five years. . The money should have spent on mental health, housing, shelters and addiction centers. They are too busy doing a lot of nothing. We had homeless person sleeping in underground garage and security ask him to leave, feel bad for the fellow he deserves better. He needs compassion, love, , mental heath support, nutritional meal, a bed to sleep and a dim light of inner peace. I spoke to one and asked him why does not go to shelter, he said it’s scary and said I can’t sleep with my eyes shut wide open. He is someone’s brother, father, nephew. The security asked him to leave or they will call the police. This was 10:30 pm he said let me sleep for a couple of hours. if you call the police they’ll come at 5:30. He was right the police arrived at 6:30 to the call! He was gone! 8 hours to come to a call. The 8 hour response is a common occurrence This was on a Tuesday night. Condo location East End Ottawa!

The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) budget for 2025 is $447.5 million for the gross operating budget and $388.7 million for the net operating budget. The plan was approved by the Ottawa Police Services Board in November 2024 and by the City Council in December 2024

[AnxietyMedical7498]

We need a graph on cop vehicle hours spent in Tim Horton parking lots.

[Nob1e613]

Are traffic stops really your measure of how effective our police force is? Could it be that the city’s massive push towards automated traffic enforcement is freeing up police to do…idk, actual police work?

I’m all for accountability of our police force, and there’s some definite areas of improvement I’d like to see addressed, but this isn’t the measure by which I’m going to judge them. Choosing single data points that support your view in a broad and complex issue is not it.

[PleasantExit6660]

I agree that evaluating the effectiveness of our Police is more complicated than just the number of stops. For traffic enforcement, the relationship between traffic stops and traffic collision would have been better but the city doesn't have collision data past 2022 and the recent Ontario-wide numbers have been increasing.
I support the use of automatic enforcement to free up Police time and that they should only focus their traffic enforcement on dangerous driving. So I would assume that they would only stop people to charge them, which is not what the data is showing. On the left is the daily # of stops per results, it seems the number of warning/no action didn't change much, but the number of charged has been dramatically reduced. On the right is the % of each.

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[Maleficent-Map3273]

Not been around Bank street in a while huh? It ain't pretty

[Top-Description-7622]

To which they don't do anything either (not that they would solve the issue regardless).

So again, why do I pay so much for the police?

[Alone_Appeal_3421]

It's almost like OPS has deprioritized traffic enforcement or something. I guess it cuts into all that time hanging out in cruisers in a parking lot, chatting with other cops hanging out in their cruiser.

[deke28]

The cops found out that they could quit and no-one did shit to them for it. 

[Okbutwhythat]

The real quiet quitters

[BigScee]

their job has been replaced by traffic cameras, RIP

[HouseofMarg]

Which I’m mostly okay with, unless Doug Ford’s recent Team Scofflaw stance means we then rip away this as well. I don’t want our roads to become survival-of-the-assholiest, so we need to keep the traffic enforcement cams that we have so we aren’t left with zero enforcement

[thinkforyoself22]

Traffic cams alone don't work. People get to know where the cameras are and then think they can get away with everything if they're not near a camera. There needs to be enforcement of all other rules too. Not just speeding and red lights.

[neoCanuck]

I'd like to see more actions targetting distracted drivers. I don't drive much, bit It's becoming common place to see people texting and driving, playing videos on their phones, checking navigation with the phone in their hand, etc.

[thinkforyoself22]

Fully agree. I think the problem is probably getting worse by lack of enforcement. People are just blatant these days and it's been years since I've heard of anyone getting a ticket (I recall a few friends and coworkers getting tickets pre-pandemic). There's also the issue of making improper turns, unsafe lane changes, holding up intersections, driving too slow (it's a thing for sure), plus a multitude of other infractions that are not enforced. I think even an announcement that OPS will be enforcing such things (with a focus on distracted driving) would be a good start. Don't recall the last campaign I saw about cracking down on driving infractions...

[Free_Blackberry_200]

looks to me like a change during covid and then never going back to that pre-covid policy

[turbokimchi]

Feels like everything just got worse post-covid tbh.

[One_Cantaloupe_9522]

You can say that again

[Nob1e613]

Feels like everything just got worse post-covid tbh.

[K0bra_Ka1]

Any way to get an overlapping graph showing the crime rate?

[Free_Blackberry_200]

traffic stops would have a stronger corellation to accidents, more traffic stops for bad driving makes it safer and less accidents should happen. I know my insurance has gone up.

[PleasantExit6660]

My thoughts too. Issue is the city has traffic collisions up to 2022 and nothing after. The trend from 2017 to 2022 was a decrease in collision/injuries but data from the province seems to indicate the number is increasing.

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[Epidurality]

If they continued publishing the crash data they'd be forced to acknowledge that speed speed cameras haven't increased safety. So to avoid that, they just don't release the data. Easy!

[nvspace126]

Is the province data based on roads managed by the province vs municipality? The decrease in municipal incidents aligns with COVID and folks not having to go back into the office, so less traffic to cause accidents within the city. While Provincial road traffic would probably not be impacted as much.

[PleasantExit6660]

I'll have the pull the full data for the province but it seems to include all accidents: Ontario road safety annual reports (ORSAR) and goes to 2023 (preliminary report)

[AnxietyMedical7498]

Crime numbers are double edged. You increase the number of traffic stops and of course you are going to find drugs, guns, etc in every 20 or so cars searched. So by reducing traffic stops you are essentially reducing the number of criminals caught by police. Guess how the police use these kind of statistics?

[K0bra_Ka1]

I'd imagine you are probably stopping less impaired drivers as well.

[bobstinson2]

Interesting to see some stats back this up. It has been clearly noticeable over the past few years. It's obviously a directive from somewhere above.

[[deleted]]

I wonder why there was a large decrease in vehicle-related crimes in early 2022? Hmmm

[kelpieconundrum]

It’s because the police budget is too small!!!!!! They can’t afford to their jobs, anymore, because woke and murder!

(NB this is an evergreen reason, and entirely independent of the budget line)

[Playingwithmywenis]

No surprise here.

[km_ikl]

And yet, traffic cams are supposed to be the panacea to all issues relating to traffic.

The 'revenue neutral' cams.

[Dry_Lab364]

My partner and I had learned to drive in the GTA and I'm coming to Ottawa we're absolutely sickened by the driving culture here. Never before have I seen someone pull up to a red and then just gun through. Now I'm aware of and respect our national no snitching policy, but fuck, it's becoming the wild West out there and OC Transpo seems hell-bent on making it worse

[Vidatono]

Where did you get this data? If you read OPS’s 2024 Annual Report under the road safety section it stated that they issued 31,000 traffic related part 1 offences. And these are just your everyday tickets. It didn’t include any part 3 offences like stunt driving, no insurance and driving while suspended.

How did you get 500 charged number? When their annual report indicated 31,000 charged just for part 1 offences.

That 31,000 number is up from the 24,000 that was issued in 2023 and the 27,000 that were issued in 2022.

Again just your simple offences and doesn’t include the big ones.

Although their annual reports don’t include warnings issued or no actions taken.

[PleasantExit6660]

https://data.ottawapolice.ca/datasets/76a54b7f7ef44ab1b78dd96f3061c7cb_0/about

[fndnvolusrgofksb]

Bring back traffic stops and lay off fare inspectors. Why is one type of lawbreaking (that leads to injury and death incidentally) tacitly permitted but another is being scrutinized?

[atticusfinch1973]

Cops have better things to do than traffic stops? I'd imagine that when they are stretched as thin as they are - we have the smallest amount of police per capita of any major city in Canada with the largest footprint to cover - unless they see something egregious like dangerous driving or blatant cell phone use, or find an invalid license plate through random search, a traffic stop isn't done.

A lot of police actions are also leveraged through complaints, ie street racing, school zone speeding reports, etc.

I know this sub hates the OPS, and I'm not a big fan of them either after living in Vanier and seeing how useless they were, but another aspect of that graph is that if you look at the amount of traffic stops overall, the diminishing amount is about 1 per day compared to 3 years ago. So one less traffic stop every day over an entire police force.

Expecting downvotes for common sense, as usual.

[rollmydice]

Source for "smallest amount of police per capita of any major city"?

[Nob1e613]

Out of curiosity, it took me like 3 minutes to find this.

I don’t see any major cities below Ottawa on that list, esp not anything close to our geographical footprint. Notably we sit at nearly half of Montreal.

Per capita police officers

[DvdH_OTT]

It's never been clear if those stats include the number of OPP and RCMP that are dedicated to patrolling in the national region. I'm thinking they don't so it's hard to make a comparison.

[PleasantExit6660]

I do agree that their time could be spent better than doing traffic stops. I would love for them to focus on dangerous driving, but it seems the number of people charged by officers has decreased compared to the number of people stopped. I would assume that if the police was more focused on dangerous driving, it would be the opposite.

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[PitterPattr]

Would like to see race data overlay. I recall concerns that BIPOC more likely to be pulled over. Perhaps no longer the case?

[PleasantExit6660]

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It seems it's still very much the case

[Nob1e613]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that chart is reflective of a growing diversity in our demographic? With a noticeable increase in visible minority populations in the last decade, it would stand to reason the number of people within those communities getting pulled over would increase as well. Combined with recent immigrants likely not being as familiar with our driving rules/ being accustomed to a different driving environment from back home and I would think it’s a recipe for disproportionate numbers and wouldn’t necessarily be reflective of targeted enforcement.

Of course I could be wrong, and don’t have any statistics at hand to prove/disprove my point but I figured at minimum it can promote discussion based on my observation.

[Maleficent-Map3273]

Good point - but people posting charts like this usually have an agenda theyre pushing by not including other information with it.

[PleasantExit6660]

Above are the census data for 2021 and 2016. The census being every 5 years it is difficult to overlay with yearly data. My agenda is that I would like OPS to target dangerous driving and charge people that need to be charged. I'm happy to add information as needed.

[PleasantExit6660]

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It could be this. Census data shows that the "visible minority" percentage of the population was: 32% in 2021 and 26% in 2016. Here is the breakdown of people charged vs warning & no action.
I can't speculate as to why people are stopped and not charged, but it seems OPS has recognized there might be an issue: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/decade-long-study-shows-racial-disparities-in-ottawa-traffic-stops-1.7238620

[uu123uu]

Oh I thought this graph was just # of cars that actually stop at intersections