Traffic Services
Improving road safety and enforcing the rules of the road are significant priorities for the Ottawa Police Service.
Our Traffic Services Unit is dedicated to improving safety on an enormous amount of rural roads and urban streets.
The Ottawa Police Marine, Dive and Trails (MDT) Unit patrols the vast waterways and trail systems in the Ottawa area.
Together, our goal is to improve road, trail, and waterway safety through intelligence-led, evidence-based, and proactive enforcement. This would not be possible without our partners.
|
Automatic Licence Plate Recognition |
|
The Ottawa Police Service uses an Automatic Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR) vehicle, a device which helps police ensure road safety by identifying a variety of Highway Traffic Act (HTA) infractions, including stolen licence plates, and suspended or unlicensed drivers. This piece of technology has been an enormous help in identifying drivers who should not be on the road. An ALPR can identify:
It can also alert officers of the presence of vehicles involved in serious crimes or wanted in instances of Amber Alerts. The system views licence plates and compares them to a provincial database. If any irregularities are found, it alerts the officer. The system can view up to 5000 plates an hour and is also in use by other police services in Canada. The Ottawa Police abide by privacy guidelines, based on our consultation with the Ontario Privacy Commissioner. This means that non-hit vehicles are deleted from the database immediately; whereas positive hits are retained for five years on the system for disclosure purposes. Ottawa Police first began using ALPR technology in 2016. Funding for the purchase of the ALPR units has come from the Safer Roads Ottawa Program. |
You will see officers from Traffic Services doing:
- Traffic enforcement
- VIP traffic escorts
- Parades, demonstrations, and major events
- Special projects focused on things like speeding, wearing seatbelts, distracted driving and much more
- Traffic complaint investigations
There is a ton of information about traffic and road safety in Ottawa and across Ontario.
Some good places to start include:
Visit Ontario.ca for information about road conditions, driver's licences, vehicle registration, emissions testing, and commercial vehicles.
The Official Ministry of Transportation (MTO) Driver's Handbook can answer your questions about driving, laws and rules of the road.
Here are some of the most popular topics we get asked about:
- Car and booster seat safety
- Cycling safety
- Distracted driving
- Driving near pedestrian crossovers and school crossings
- E-Scooters
- E-Bikes
- Highway Traffic Act (Ontario)
- Impaired driving
- Motorcycle safety
- Pedestrian safety
- Road safety
- School bus safety
- Tickets
- Winter driving
Related information:
Check out our road safety playlist on YouTube.