Road safety campaigners have called for speed cameras to be banned after police almost halved road deaths without them. Just two forces in Britain are understood to shun fixed speed traps and both have recorded huge reductions in road deaths.
Even though Durham Constabulary only gets £169,000 in fines - tiny compared to those using fixed cameras - its force has cut its road death toll from 44 in 1998 to 26 last year, a drop of over 40%. Neighbouring forces have raked in millions of pounds by using Gatsos but have not seen such large reductions.
Northumbria has 45 fixed cameras and 104 mobile sites and collected more than £3million. However the only other force in the country to have banned fixed cameras is nearby North Yorkshire and road deaths have dropped 15%.
Claire Armstrong, of the anti-fixed camera campaign group Safe Speed, said: 'Speed cameras are not saving lives. The police presence on the road is no longer there. You can drive up and down all day and not see a single police car. It is very worrying. Speed cameras just target the ordinary, law-abiding motorist who goes a few miles an hour over the limit but isn’t driving dangerously.The result is that the relationship between the police and the public is now at an all-time low.'
In Durham – which has just one mobile speed camera, - the force’s policy is to operate 'common sense' policing and work with drivers to improve road safety.
PC Dave Nixon, the county’s casualty reduction officer, said: 'We police by public consent. The decision was taken at the highest level that we could do this in a proportionate manner. We felt that we could keep our local community on side, so that when we need help on other things, they wouldn’t be reluctant to help us.'