Speed Cameras, are they for safety, or revenue?

[0000]

Don't they have cameras in those vans then?

[vonhosen]

Pints said:

vonhosen said:

They're for neither.
They are for enforcing the limit.
The question should be is the imposition of speed limits for safety or revenue.

If X = Y, and Y = Z, therefore X = Z.

Now that we've established the obvious, is the "enforcement" using speed cameras intended for safety or revenue?
No fence sitting required.

The purpose of enforcement is to uphold the limit.

[LoonR1]

0000 said:

Don't they have cameras in those vans then?

I'm sure they do, but they are known as speed traps, rather than speed cameras. If we want to bring these in, why don't we include in-car video too amd the whole concept of roads policing.

[Phatboy317]

Countdown said:

mybrainhurts said:

Yes but, instead of spending time "watching for them anchoring on", wouldn't it be more productive to scan around you for pedestrians, cyclists, emerging vehicles, animals and the like?

It's not an Either /Or situation. A competent driver should be capable of doing both.

Try this experiment:

Sign your name on a piece of paper.
Then, with your left hand (or other hand), draw a circle.
Easy, isn't it?

Now try doing them both at the same time...

People can multitask, but they can't have their mind on more than one task at any moment in time.

If you find yourself in a situation where a fraction of a second can mean the difference between life and death, you don't want to be spending that same fraction of a second thinking about cameras.

[Dammit]

So it's better that they're speeding when the other thing happens?

[jondude]

Have not been to the UK recently so I do not know if they have done this, but to me if it was about safety there would be massive signs warning people they are 1k or whatever from 'a safety zone monitored by cameras'. And the camera on a countdown (as it is here in Asia).

Then you would also get another 1k of vehicles slowing and yes, being more safe.

If that has happened, great for then I will say they are to promote safety. But if they still are hidden and often placed in dubious spots (like the one covered by a tree at the bottom of a steep hill that would have got me unless the local ahead blocked me) then no.

[singlecoil]

Jasandjules said:

Right, given that it appears some feel that speed cameras are about safety whilst I believe they are about Revenue and that it is inherently illogical to suggest that sticking to a speed limit is "safe".

This Poll is, in all the circumstances, open to those members who have been here in excess of five years.

So, please vote.......

Oh God, not that boring stupid strawman argument again!

No-one has ever even suggested that sticking to a speed limit is safe. No-one, ever.

The only people who use it are the 'I want to go faster' brigade.

[Jasandjules]

LoonR1 said:

SPEED CAMERAS NOT SPEED TRAPS.

Thanks, but in this instance I am referring to any speed camera, including those hidden in horseboxes or otherwise. Any "Speed Camera" in whatever form is still a speed camera.

[vonhosen]

jondude said:

Have not been to the UK recently so I do not know if they have done this, but to me if it was about safety there would be massive signs warning people they are 1k or whatever from 'a safety zone monitored by cameras'. And the camera on a countdown (as it is here in Asia).

Then you would also get another 1k of vehicles slowing and yes, being more safe.

If that has happened, great for then I will say they are to promote safety. But if they still are hidden and often placed in dubious spots (like the one covered by a tree at the bottom of a steep hill that would have got me unless the local ahead blocked me) then no.

You want people to be obeying the limit everywhere, not just at the site where a camera is (the same reason you have covert Police cars as well as marked to enforce all road laws, so that people moderate their driving when a marked car isn't visible).
You'll get warning signs that you are in a camera enforcement area.

[LoonR1]

Jasandjules said:

LoonR1 said:

SPEED CAMERAS NOT SPEED TRAPS.

Thanks, but in this instance I am referring to any speed camera, including those hidden in horseboxes or otherwise. Any "Speed Camera" in whatever form is still a speed camera.

Then on that basis, you're questioning all forms of roads policing including traffic police, as they carry p,empty of speed detection equipment too. This thread is only going down the route of "I'm a better driver than everyone else so should be free to drive at whatever speed I like wherever I like. However, everyone else should be forced to surrender their licence."

On a slightly more serious note, if I chose to speed up amd down your road, because there was no rosk of speed limit enforcement how would you feel then? No enforcement, means no adverse consequences until the driver does actually kill, or injure someone, or damage their property.

[anonymous-user]

LoonR1 said:

If all cameras were removed and replaced by two traffic officers in a marked car at the exact same spot at every camera site would that make it better for you?

They are about enforcement of speed limits. Whether that raises revenue is moot, as the penalty is the same if caught by a traffic officer. Most don't like speed limits, most of us speed most of the time, I certainly do. If I get caught it's just one of those things.

I got away with a rather stupid drag race to 90 in a 40 with what turned out to be an unmarked car the other month. The coppers laughed and let me off with a bking. Had there been a speed camera there, then I'd have been on my way to court, or actually more likely is that I wouldn't as I wouldn't have done what I did and would have gone up there at 40.

I won the drag race and whip round the roundabout, if anyone's interested.

This rather underlines that enforcement of the limit by camera is about revenue rather than safety, doesn't it?

You were caught by Trafpol and then let off; for whatever reason they exercised a discretion not to ticket you. Had you been caught by a camera, as you say, no discretion and you'd be looking at some fairly unpalatable punishment.


ETA: having just been up and down the M1 over the last few days, with its Smart overhead gantries dripping with Gatsos, and (currently) three sections of ave speed cam enforced 50 mph limits through unmanned semi permanent roadworks (the longest of which was just over 20 miles), it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that safety plays a very distant second fiddle to revenue raising in the deployment of speed cams.

Edited by anonymous-user on Saturday 3rd January 12:09

[singlecoil]

Greg66 said:

LoonR1 said:

If all cameras were removed and replaced by two traffic officers in a marked car at the exact same spot at every camera site would that make it better for you?

They are about enforcement of speed limits. Whether that raises revenue is moot, as the penalty is the same if caught by a traffic officer. Most don't like speed limits, most of us speed most of the time, I certainly do. If I get caught it's just one of those things.

I got away with a rather stupid drag race to 90 in a 40 with what turned out to be an unmarked car the other month. The coppers laughed and let me off with a bking. Had there been a speed camera there, then I'd have been on my way to court, or actually more likely is that I wouldn't as I wouldn't have done what I did and would have gone up there at 40.

I won the drag race and whip round the roundabout, if anyone's interested.

This rather underlines that enforcement of the limit by camera is about revenue rather than safety, doesn't it?

You were caught by Trafpol and then let off; for whatever reason they exercised a discretion not to ticket you. Had you been caught by a camera, as you say, no discretion and you'd be looking at some fairly unpalatable punishment.

Well, by Loon's own admission he speeds a LOT. So the warning hasn't worked in his case and I daresay wouldn't in many other cases too.

[otolith]

Speed limits exist for safety and for environmental reasons. Cameras exist to enforce them. The way that speed cameras are administered leads to their proliferation and a chunk of the public sector dependent on their revenue - note what happened between the end of netting off and the growth of the speed awareness income stream.

They also appeal to those with a desire to exert control. They eliminate civic disobedience however unreasonable a limit one wishes to set.

[anonymous-user]

singlecoil said:

Well, by Loon's own admission he speeds a LOT. So the warning hasn't worked in his case and I daresay wouldn't in many other cases too.

Conversely, unless he is not telling us the whole story, he speeds a lot without having accidents. So there' say disconnect between safety and speed limits, at least in his case (and I daresay other cases too).

[jondude]

vonhosen said:

jondude said:

Have not been to the UK recently so I do not know if they have done this, but to me if it was about safety there would be massive signs warning people they are 1k or whatever from 'a safety zone monitored by cameras'. And the camera on a countdown (as it is here in Asia).

Then you would also get another 1k of vehicles slowing and yes, being more safe.

If that has happened, great for then I will say they are to promote safety. But if they still are hidden and often placed in dubious spots (like the one covered by a tree at the bottom of a steep hill that would have got me unless the local ahead blocked me) then no.

You want people to be obeying the limit everywhere, not just at the site where a camera is (the same reason you have covert Police cars as well as marked to enforce all road laws, so that people moderate their driving when a marked car isn't visible).
You'll get warning signs that you are in a camera enforcement area.

I disagree - as an ideal you want people to be driving with care. We label people as 'speeders' as if they automatically are bad drivers, criminals, when someone doing 35 in a 30 could well be far less dangerous than someone on 29 but not giving a damn about car control or manners to others.

I am not sure sending people a ticket 14 days after an offence really achieves much, except alienate the masses from the police, especially when it is 35mph at 2 am on a clearly deserted road, the exact scenario where a ticking off from a real police officer may indeed induce a change in behaviour.

We presently have a system with cameras where, so long as you slow for them, you can tailgate, speed up when others overtake and generally be a danger to everyone, with little or no risk to your license.

That is not a good ideal or objective to have (or more accept) as a policing force or government.

[btcc123]

I think that the different councils or police forces who operate speed cameras may have a different approach regarding safety and cash revenue.Generally I think they are on safety grounds and situated in sports with high accident rates and know that certainly approximately £25 of the speed awareness courses is used to fund activities like providing childern with florescent jackets when riding their bikes to school,cycling tuition at school etc.

I would rather there were cameras so the police could catch the real criminals and to be honest they are not hard to see and as driving is about awareness and anticipation if you get caught tough luck.

I read somewhere that the cost of the cameras and administration of them for a year in the whole country in relation to the revenue they bring in from fines the profit was less than Simon Cowell pays in tax and he lives half the year abroad.

[LoonR1]

Greg66 said:

LoonR1 said:

If all cameras were removed and replaced by two traffic officers in a marked car at the exact same spot at every camera site would that make it better for you?

They are about enforcement of speed limits. Whether that raises revenue is moot, as the penalty is the same if caught by a traffic officer. Most don't like speed limits, most of us speed most of the time, I certainly do. If I get caught it's just one of those things.

I got away with a rather stupid drag race to 90 in a 40 with what turned out to be an unmarked car the other month. The coppers laughed and let me off with a bking. Had there been a speed camera there, then I'd have been on my way to court, or actually more likely is that I wouldn't as I wouldn't have done what I did and would have gone up there at 40.

I won the drag race and whip round the roundabout, if anyone's interested.

This rather underlines that enforcement of the limit by camera is about revenue rather than safety, doesn't it?

You were caught by Trafpol and then let off; for whatever reason they exercised a discretion not to ticket you. Had you been caught by a camera, as you say, no discretion and you'd be looking at some fairly unpalatable punishment.


ETA: having just been up and down the M1 over the last few days, with its Smart overhead gantries dripping with Gatsos, and (currently) three sections of ave speed cam enforced 50 mph limits through unmanned semi permanent roadworks (the longest of which was just over 20 miles), it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that safety plays a very distant second fiddle to revenue raising in the deployment of speed cams.

Edited by Greg66 on Saturday 3rd January 12:09

Last sentence of paragraph three.

Had there been a fixed speed camera, then I wouldn't have done it, so zero penalty
Had there been a marked van there, then I wouldn't have done it, so zero penalty

The point is that the two scenarios above would've stopped me. Was what I did safe? Dunno, if someone else had done it, I'd probably have called them an idiot, so that speaks volumes about me.

[LoonR1]

singlecoil said:

Well, by Loon's own admission he speeds a LOT. So the warning hasn't worked in his case and I daresay wouldn't in many other cases too.

I tend not to do drag races at those lights anymore. I drive pretty well 10 mph over the limit everywhere amd at 90 on motorways. NSLs on the bike are a whole different story.

[twister]

LoonR1 said:

Then on that basis, you're questioning all forms of roads policing including traffic police, as they carry p,empty of speed detection equipment too.

Hang on a minute, I don't think it's fair to lump in traffic police there, as unlike the other cameras/traps/whatever you want to call them they have the unique ability to not only measure speed (not to mention all the other traffic offences they're also able to detect) but also act on it immediately, even if the person speeding is doing so in a stolen/incorrectly registered/false or damaged plate wearing vehicle which would allow them to escape the punishment doled out by every other camera system deployed on UK roads.

[singlecoil]

Greg66 said:

singlecoil said:

Well, by Loon's own admission he speeds a LOT. So the warning hasn't worked in his case and I daresay wouldn't in many other cases too.

Conversely, unless he is not telling us the whole story, he speeds a lot without having accidents. So there' say disconnect between safety and speed limits, at least in his case (and I daresay other cases too).

Maybe there is such a disconnect, there certainly is in my case. However, I accept the need to stay within speed limits because I want others to stay within those limits too, as I know there are a great many people out there who can't be trusted to drive sensibly and attentively. I'm not so selfish as to think I shouldn't have to abide by the laws that restrict them.