Monday 3rd October 2005

Drivers face more speeding fines

Emphasis on speed limits for road safety condemned

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It's all about speed, they say

Road safety has taken a step backwards as speed camera partnerships find a way of increasing the number of cases they can handle, increasing the emphasis of road safety enforcement on speed alone rather than overall safety.

Road safety organisation The Association of British Drivers (ABD) has discovered a new system that could enable speed camera partnerships to process 650 per cent more prosecutions automatically. The automated system, called StarTraq, would enable a Speed Camera Partnership to increase prosecutions from 800 per day (£48,000) to 6,000 (£360,000) per day.

In the UK, Derbyshire, Wiltshire and Swindon, North Wales, Kent and Medway and Bedfordshire Camera Partnerships are already using the system, with the likelihood of more partnerships considering it.

Scamera partnerships have, until recently, been limited in the number of fines they could manually process per day. This has led to them setting higher trigger speeds for their cameras to contain the case workload. The StarTraq system enables them to increase the number of drivers fined by 650 per cent, according to information from the company. With increased processing capability, partnerships will be able to reduce camera trigger speeds.

StarTraq is already in use in South Africa, and the company quotes a reference from the City Council of Pretoria: "We are beating our annual budget with over R33 million in collections to date."

ABD road safety spokesman Mark McArthur-Christie said: "It’s a tragedy when road safety has moved so far away from saving lives that it is reduced to maximising the number of tickets and fines a partnership can process in a day."

[Mr Freefall]

Bloody glad I get the train to work now. I see more and more people being banned from totting up ahead in the next few months.

Mr F

[_VTEC_]

Would a chainsaw suffice? I've heard those 'necklace' type thingies are effective too.

[J99NNO]

Why do with bother.

I am going to give up driving and work, and become the local burgular - I can walk to work and less chance of getting caught.

[Dogwatch]

Government is getting windy over the number of scameras and the reaction from motorists (aka voters) so i suppose the scamera parterships are having to look at how they can crank up their income.

[turbo tim]

StarTraq in the article said:

"We are beating our annual budget with over R33 million in collections to date."

The instance it becomes about "budgets" rather than accident rates, it becomes blatanly clear that it's about the money and nothing to do with safety....

[NormanD]

J99NNO said:

Why do with bother. I am going to give up driving and work, and become the local burgular - I can walk to work and less chance of getting caught.

Good idea mate

The cops aren't interested in you atall then.
To much paper work for them, and no profit.

[james_j]

Dogwatch said:

Government is getting windy over the number of scameras and the reaction from motorists (aka voters) so i suppose the scamera parterships are having to look at how they can crank up their income.

Yes, and more evidence of the government's "windyness" is their BS talk (and desperation to look like they're "doing something" about raising some speed limits. As if they haven't been lowered by too much anyway in the last 7 or 8 years.

[ED965]

Typical of this goverment and modern day lack of Police.
I understand a net profit of £20 Million was generated last year from Speed Camara convictions only.
My next door neighbour was burgled recently and he has heard nothing yet.
There is talk now of banning speed camara detectors, this just sums up that the modern day innocent motorist is just a bloody cash point, and when you travel 40 to 50k miles pa as i do just to earn a wage it is bloody frustrating, i have no respect for the goverment or the Police force anymore.
Captain Gatso is so right!

[antispeed]

ED965 said:

Typical of this goverment and modern day lack of Police. I understand a net profit of £20 Million was generated last year from Speed Camara convictions only. My next door neighbour was burgled recently and he has heard nothing yet. There is talk now of banning speed camara detectors, this just sums up that the modern day innocent motorist is just a bloody cash point, and when you travel 40 to 50k miles pa as i do just to earn a wage it is bloody frustrating, i have no respect for the goverment or the Police force anymore. Captain Gatso is so right!

SO :cencored: RIGHT!!!!!!
the ordinary moterist will now start to feel the real pinch, and , as usual , slowly start to react:-
With necklaces,(then the scameateri wil fire proof them at exorbitant costs),
Mowwing the long grass,( then the scameateri will put in "safty Barriers"(??) to stop innocents from crashing into their cash machines),
With a well placed drill hole and foam gun, (then the scameateri will add armour plating direct from russia spare tank factory, even more expensive!!),
Buying a banger and accidently (of course officer) backing into a scamcan or scamvan, (then the scameateri will put up cones around so you can actually SEE them hiding.),
Paintball gunnery targets, all lit up in flouresent green, so we can see them in the dark winters nights ahead,(then the scameateri will put in CCTV on all scamcans, again at enormouse expence),

and so it will go on and on til election time

[mybrainhurts]

Whoever thought government would ape Dick Turpin...?

[alanc5]

This is really going crazy isn't it. I feel a bit numb about the whole thing. The previous poster was right, how dare they refer to these with regard to budgets?

I find this shocking, there is nothing at all to do with road safety here, people are being conned out of millions of pounds, it's literally highway robbery yet none of us does anything about it.

Actually, nobody will do anything about so it's pointless moaning. We get raped at the pumps, charged a million different taxes for various things, often twice, now robbed with budget meeting cameras who's only purpose is to make money. You have to hand it to the government, they know the British will just roll over and take ANYTHING. When people don't react you just keep doing what you do. It's almost funny!

[parrot of doom]

Paul Smith is doing lots about it.

I do my bit by telling people I work with (when the subject arises) just how big a scam it all is. You'd be surprised how many people don't know what its all about.

[cjn]

There is one answer that will get rid of the Scamera Partneship Treehuggers, starve them of the on thing they need to survive - ££££CASH.


If everyone drove under the speed limit until all of the partnerships died, we'd be laughing.

We'd get plod back out on the roads catching the people who cause accidents by careless & reckless driving

[J99NNO]

So let me get this right.

I can now go to work with 650% more chance of getting a speeding fine, because the local speed camera partnership is now a super computer. It has cost me a fortune to get here because I am paying a fortune in fuel tax, and when i do get here, it is harder to buy produce and sell anything because minimum wage has gone up (so the government can get more income tax) which has increased the price of the goods, which in turn has cost a fortune to get delivered because the haulage firm has huge fuel costs, and when it finally gets here nobody can afford to buy it because they are all skint from paying for fuel and speeding fines, and have loaded themselves up with the biggest mortgage ever just so they can get a roof over there head. The only people with enough money to buy anything are asylum seekers, who get their money from . . . . .

I am so proud to be here!