Canada

Can you link some studies to start with? I am curious because I haven't heard of any increase of collisions in my area and the speed has definitely dropped

As someone who has studied traffic engineering in school and works in road design, I'd be very curious what studies these were.

Look into it, there’s a heavy increase in collisions where cameras are present.

Only place I've seen this data was as an example in school of what not to do - several states had low yellow times (1-2s shorter than Ontario's), and added red light cameras at large, wide intersections that took longer to cross than the yellow timer, meaning if you entered on a green you could theoretically get hit with a red light violation. But those studies were late 90s, early 00s.

Every piece of data I've seen shows either a reduction in speed (even post camera removal), or minimal change after removal.

Note that studies need to reflect current state cameras in Ontario - only allowed to be used in school zones, and need to have signage present indicating their use. They're not used specifically at intersections.

Additionally, the fees for traffic cameras go back to road redesign budget, which is used (on the projects I've worked on) to provide traffic calming measures like narrower lanes, AT facilities, etc. Cameras should be a stop gap measure, and are vastly preferable to an increase in the polices budget to have increased traffic enforcement presence.

While I do agree with your sentiment that street safety is a more complex issue that the small subset of enforcement that cameras provide, you seems to making perfect the enemy of the good.

"the installation of a camera is an admission that real safety measures are being actively ignored."

While this statement may hold true for many different examples, security cameras in a store or in a public space do provide a level of "security", similar to how a officer or a on-duty security guard may provide a level of "security" when on premise. But, crime prevention starts at the social level of a society with access to education, healthcare, housing, and meaningful fulfilling work.

North America has IMO some of the worst roadway classifications, or lack thereof. We have residential and city streets designed like throughways with six lanes of traffic. At the same time we have roads designed like streets with multiple driveways and points of conflict between pedestrians, cyclists, and cars.

Traffic calming measures are ideally the end goals with complete street redesigns to actually match the streets intended use and posted limits.

Now cycling Infrastructure such as dedicated cycling lanes and intersection's with dedicated saftey curbs ie. "bike bananas" are a traffic claiming measure. They shrink car lanes to prevent speeding, and actively promoting safer streets within cities and towns. But somehow Dougie seems to be both against traffic cameras and any type of city street redesign that negates the need for said cameras.

Now ideal the small "revenue" that a traffic camera may produce is intended to go back into the roadway its self. Where traditional tickets from a officer may go into the funding of the police department. Similarly like how NYC's congestion pricing for example, where all revenue goes back into the cities transit and infrastructure.