Thames Valley - 'The Safer Roads Campaign'

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Saw this in a Reading freeby. Speeding motorists caught on camera have paid for a 10-man traffic squad to patrol roads across the Thames Valley. Thames Valley Police is using cash from fixed penalty speeding fines to pay for the speed enforcement squad under a Government pilot scheme, The Safer Roads Campaign, allowing it to use some of the money fro road safety. Inspector Malcolm Collis, head of the campaign, said: "The new team will provide a visible deterrent to speeding motorists and will also be able to explain to drivers why reducing speed is a crucial part of road safety. "We know some members of the driving public are critical about the focus on speed enforcement but we have to take every measure available to make roads safer. "It is correct to say speed reduction is not the only way of reducing casualties as there are a number of factors which cause collisions and injury. "But reducing speed is one of the most efective ways of reducing injuries on the road as our figure indicate." etc etc Nice to see some public acknowledgement from a senior officer that there's more to road safety than speed. However, a comment in the same article from a Thames Valley Police spokesman spoilt it a little. "This is a scheme which means that some of the money from camera fines are given back to magistrates, the Crown Prosecution Service, police and the Highways Agency provided it is spent on cutting collisions by reducing driver speed." etc etc When will it sink into the policy makers' little heads that there are many effective ways of reducing collisions/casualties that do not continually rile the car driver by using zero-tolerance machines on safe roads to impose silly speed limits? As the police units have to follow policy from above (JR - interesting point made in one of your posts) it seems the policy makers need to come out into the real world, away from government Rovers and Whitehall.