Safety aid or stealth tax?

0 Comments | Northern Echo, Jul 27, 2010 | by Nigel Burton

Thousands of speed cameras could be axed after the Government slashed funding for them. Road safety partnerships responsible for the camera network claim this will lead to more accidents. Critics say cameras were never about road safety, but revenue generation. The Northern Echo’s motoring editor Nigel Burton puts the case for scrapping the cameras – and Julie Townsend, deputy chief executive of independent road safety charity Brake, explains why we still need them

Nigel Burton has been Motoring Editor of The Northern Echo for 20 years. A qualified advanced driver, he religiously observes speed limits and has a clean licence (touch wood).

IT’S a sinking feeling tens of thousands of drivers experience every year. One minute you are driving along minding your own business, the next there’s a double flash in the rear view mirror and the creeping realisation that you’ve just been snapped by a speed camera.

More than 1.8million tickets are issued this way every year.

Camera numbers have grown every year since the 1991 Road Traffic Act allowed their use to prosecute motorists breaking the speed limit.

But not for much longer, it seems.

The Government has cut the amount of cash given to councils for road safety initiatives by 40 per cent – limiting the money that can be handed on to safety camera partnerships – and banned all funding for new cameras.

And not a moment too soon.

The proliferation in speed cameras on our roads had less to do with safety than an insidious stealth tax that allowed the real danger drivers – the ones who get behind the wheel drunk or with no tax, MoT or insurance – to get away with their disgraceful antics.

Motorists were conned into accepting speed cameras. Initially, the Government said it would only be used at accident blackspots and traffic lights, so we acquiesced despite our fears.

But the rules were soon relaxed when officials realised how much a camera on a quiet stretch of road could rake in.

The most profitable camera in Britain – monitoring a bus lane with a badly signposted diversion – fleeced drivers of [pounds]2m in just three months. No injuries were avoided, speeds didn’t change and no lives were saved.

I’m not against speed cameras per se. In some cases they can make a positive contribution to road safety.

But I believe that a camera is nothing more than a cheap band aid. The real solution for an accident blackspot is to redesign it – removing the problem so drivers and pedestrians can go about their business safely. But realigning roads, adding roundabouts or traffic lights costs money – lots of it.

How much easier it was to pay [pounds]30,000 for a speed camera that, when set up, required hardly anything in maintenance, while the money just rolled in.

Police guidelines defined blackspots as a stretch of road where there have been eight accidents (including four serious) in three years.

But a study carried out in 2008 found that many of these blackspots were nothing of the sort – their accident record wasn’t the result of speeding or dangerous driving but, more likely, weather conditions or simple bad luck.

If a camera went up at one of these sites, and the accident rate fell, officials were quick to claim a success, but experts concluded it was likely the figures would have fallen regardless. This effect is called “regression to mean” and is familiar to statisticians, but not, it appears, to safety camera supporters.

FOR careful drivers, like me, speed cameras are a menace because they distract my attention from the road.

Since I cannot rely on driving sensibly to avoid a fine, I have to constantly scan the roadside for a yellow box and be aware that the car in front may suddenly slow for no apparent reason.

In recent years, motorists have finally become fed up. Even a name change, from speed cameras to safety cameras, wasn’t enough to save the hated Gatso from being rumbled as just another stealth tax.

Sadly, the real speed camera scandal – the extent to which cameras have been used to replace highly-trained police drivers – will now come home to roost.

As a result of the run down of police traffic units, the number of warnings and vehicle rectification notices issued to motorists driving dangerous cars has more than halved
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