A speed camera caused a traffic police officer to crash, according to the Lancashire Evening Post, and the officer subsequently admitted, and was convicted of, driving without due care and attention.
PC Scott Warburton was driving at 91mph in a 30mph limit on the A6 Scotforth Road at Lancaster. He spotted a speed camera, braked sharply and lost control of the vehicle. The Ford Galaxy was fitted with an incident data recorder that recorded a peak speed of 91 miles per hour some 10 seconds before the accident, the local magistrates court heard.
The prosecutor told the court: "Upon seeing a speed camera he braked sharply, lost control and hit two signs on the central reservation. He came to a halt on the northbound carriageway. He was not responding to a code one incident and the blue lights were not in use."
The officer admitted the offence by post so magistrates adjourned his case for two weeks so he could appear before them.
Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign, said: "It is so important that we focus on the real causes of road danger. Obvious answers and knee jerk policies will not save lives.
"For the causes of this and every crash we must look inside the mind of the driver. Safety is about skills and attitudes rather than rules and regulations -- so much so that it is quite impossible to prevent such crashes with regulation.
"Cases like this distort road safety objectives and damage the Police / public relationship. They strongly tend to raise the wrong issues. The right road safety issue arising from this case is that people must drive with an appropriate sense of responsibility, but I fear that there will be loud and ignorant baying for further regulation."
SafeSpeed posited the following claims and the truth:
- He shouldn't be allowed to drive so fast: true. But the measure of 'too fast' is not that his numerical speed was high, but that he lost control and crashed.
- Police officers should be restricted to driving at the speed limit: false. We need Police officers to attend incidents as quickly as safely possible. It is frequently safe for properly trained drivers to exceed the speed limits by wild margins.
- Speed cameras prevent bad driving and high speed crashes: false. The evidence of this case is entirely the opposite.
- We need more regulation: False. We need better attitudes and better skills.
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