Wednesday 1st February 2006

Camera guidance is 'a blunder'

Speed camera site rules are wrong: campaign

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Why is this here?

The Department for Transport (DfT) yesterday published new rules for speed camera partnerships. And, according to road safety campaign Safe Speed, they're still wrong.

That's because, said the campaign, sites where it is officially dangerous to speed are still excluded from consideration as potential camera locations.

Safe Speed said that it first revealed the so-called 'rules blunder' in January 2004. The DfT selects sites where responsible motorists are speeding and excludes sites where no responsible motorists are speeding. Because of this, cameras don't enforce speed limits in, say, narrow village high streets, where they would catch the occasional nutter. They only enforce in places where driving in excess of the speed limit is seen by drivers as safe and appropriate.

It is this that causes the widespread perception that speed cameras are in the wrong places, said Safe Speed.

Campaign founder Paul Smith said: "The incompetence and mismanagement behind the speed camera programme is breathtaking. They have misused speed cameras to the point that public confidence has evaporated.

"This blunder ensures that the misuse will continue. Cameras may only be placed only placed where routine speeding is safe. The continual confusion between safe behaviour and legal behaviour is misdirecting everyone's road safety efforts. We must encourage safe behaviours rather than those that are merely legal.

"The speed camera programme is to road safety what a hammer is to clock repair -- it's blunt and heavy and does far more harm than good. "The only answer now is to remove all speed cameras from UK roads, and rebuild road safety based on psychologically effective policies.

"Appendix H of the 4th year report (published December 15th 2005 by DfT) suggests that speed camera effectiveness has been overestimated by 400 per cent, and even that has not considered the wide ranging deadly side effects. When the side effects are eventually evaluated it will become clear how many people are dying due to the fatally flawed policy."

^{Image courtesy www.speedcam.co.uk}

[thegamekeeper]

the road through the next village to where I live has a petrol staion, pub, houses including a new development and several side roads and has what everyone considers to be a safe 40mph limit. At the far end of the village is a roundabout a 400 metre stretch of road with no houses, or junctions and runs through an industrial area before a second roundabout, both rooundabouts feed the industrial area. As I type this post there is a safety partnership van hiding and has been there EVERY day for the last 3 weeks. The speed limit on this stretch of road is, yes you guessed 30mph. Looking at the safety partnerships own published figures there have been no fatalities on this stretch since they started publishing the figures in 2000 and the last accident was in November 2002 at 5.50 in the morning when someone skidded on ice and hit a lamp post (sue the local authority for not gritting on icy nights--that would surely improve road safety more than hiding in a van for 3 weeks disenfranchising innocent motorists).
2 miles away on an A road there were 3 fatal accidents last year on a 200 metre stretch of road, one involving a lorry demolishing a 16th century thatched cottage and have I never seen a safety partnership van hiding there, you guessed again, NO. If the local safety partnership were vaguely interested in safety they would have engineered the roadway to prevent accidents but that would cost money, the van makes money.


>> Edited by thegamekeeper on Wednesday 1st February 12:51