hedgehog

"More than 12 million motorists have been caught by speed cameras in Britain, new figures reveal. They have paid at least £700million in fines since cameras first came into use in 1992."

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/17709511

Brendan Hughes

Which motorists were abused?

paul-s

all of them

Iain Young

Why are they abused? They broke the law, and they were caught. End of story...

paul-s

yes but hardly saving lives is it, keeping stake outs in vans at the sides of roads, and hiding speed cameras. Its an easily collectable tax

Iain Young

It's not a tax. It's a fine. Taxes are mandatory payments, fines are only issued if you are doing something naughty. If you don't want to pay it, don't break the law.

And you have no idea if it's saving lives or not. The only way to tell would be to remove all cameras and see if the death / accident rates increase. There is no logical / scientific reasoning behind any of the quoted statistics, (for or against).

suprabeast

oh oh oh by the book... lead your life according to how everything is written down for you....



god your life must be boring

OllyK

Speed cameras are not saving lives.

Councils etc are artificially lowering speed limits on roads and then putting cameras on them to generate revenue. Look back to the thread about the A610 - a dual carriageway with a 40mph speed limit. I am STILL trying to get an explanation from Notts Highways authority and have even now included my MP and the MP of the offendign area in the correspondence I still have not had an answer.

suprabeast

of course it isnt saving lives... every camera i go through is on a main road in places where you can catch people who can safety drive faster than the speed limit because the limit is inappropriately set

OllyK

Well they have tried the reverse - introducing thousands of cameras which have had naff all effect on the number of road deaths, I'd be willing to put money on removing them having little or no effect on road deaths as well.

Iain Young

Thank you for that well informed and intelligent reply

My life is not boring. I have an Sti which I do drive fast. However, I keep my speeding for the race track (track days) where it belongs rather than on the public roads.

All I'm saying is that if you break the law, there's no point complaining that you are being abused if you are caught...

Iain Young

Very likely. But it cannot be proven either way unless they actually do it.

paul-s

if it was that important about saving lives and not collecting revenue they would lower the penalty from 60 quid and introduce higher points for such offences thus still stopping the offending drivers from having a license if required yet not collecting **** loads of 'tax' cash

Vette_76

Hmmm.....until you know what the officer did and why the officer first needed lubricant and a rubber glove, I believe you should keep schtum!!

Iain Young

So how do you know it is inappropriately set? I presume you have looked into the accident history of every camera location you've driven past then?

OllyK

In principal you are correct, the issue I have is that the conditions are being artificially messed with to try and generate more law breakers.

How much lower can they artifically lower a speed limit before people will exceed it through fustration. Again, I point you to the A610 - a perfectly good dual carriageway reduced from 70mph to 40mph.

Brendan Hughes

So you end up with 12 million banned drivers. Riiiiight....

OllyK

Errr - 85th percentile perhaps?

OllyK

But if speeding really is the henous crime it is made out to be, then that's what we have to do. No second chances, immediate ban for 5 years.

They won't do that because they would loose massive revenues and speeding isn't really that much of an issue in the scheme of things. Why do you think they are now looking to grade the points you get, so if you are only slightly over you get less points (so you can be fined more before you get banned) and change the fines to be income related (so they can fine you more if you can afford it). The government want and need you to speed to generate the revenues and they know it isn't going to result in more road deaths if you do, so they don't actually do anything to really try and stop it.

paul-s

^^what he said^^ Exactly

Iain Young

I agree with that. There are a few roads around here which have been reduced like that. If you are a good driver however, it's no problem keeping within the limits (as long as you know what they are).

However, there are other roads for example which have a reduced limit on them for no obvious reason when just driving through, but when you look into it, they have been used as racetracks etc by the local chavs. As with all things they have to legislate for the lowest common denominator.

I would argue that this would be better dealt with by having a more visible police presence rather than relying on automated detection systems. However that is a different argument...

OllyK

Indeed I can put the car in 1st, leave it to tick over and I potter along at a steady 3mph. The question is, how low will they have to set the limit before you get pissed off and exceed it?

But if chavs exceeded the previously posted NSL by doing 80mph for example, what do you think the chances are they will stick to a 40mph on the same road? How many other drivers who kept to the NSL are now being inconvenienced for what benefit?

Now you're getting warmer, combine that with better driver training in the first place, and improved road engineering and speed limit setting and we have the basis for a road policy that will have less congestion and fewer accidents and road deaths, and almost certainly far fewer speeding prosecutions.

Angry

And I wonder how much of that £700m has been ploughed back in to driver training programmes, the kinds of training programmes that will have an affect on the 93% of accidents unrelated to speed.

**** all is my bet.

Spring Heeled Jack

There's always 'one' isn't there.

Angry

One what?

turboman786

For those who think speeding aint that serios, and is all a tax raising game, stop whinging, and learn how to get off them!

Buckrogers

At least we can rest assured, the goverment will have spent the £700million wisely.....


Just on the training thing, slight side note. Some old boy came down our one way street today, the wrong way. Despite three different people telling him and every car parked facing him, he carried on in his own world.....

hedgehog

It must be said that in a democratic society many people given to consider such things might demand some investigation into any law which criminalises a large proportion of the population without providing any benefit to that society. Oft used examples include giving women the vote and slavery. I don't think there are many who would want these back even though they were once the law of the land. Bad law does happen and sometimes it takes a lot of effort to change it.

Has automatic traffic policing provided a benefit? Well, there are some interesting figures that we can compare because the CC in Durham, Paul Garvin, doesn't have any speed cameras or other means of automated enforcement in his county, so we have a control. In Durham accidents per mile driven are about 40% below the national average and fatalities per mile are about 35% below the national average. So, it seems fairly reasonable to assert that not having automatic speed enforcement systems doesn't need to mean carnage on your roads. Durham is about the only place in the UK that is giving motorists fewer tickets year on year, the last year for which I have figures was over 30% down on the previous year. Paul Gavin is a big supporter of police on the roads and training for motorists who offend.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, speeding fines are up 61% from 2002 to 2003 (the last year for which official figures are available from the Scottish Exec) and in the same period fatalities on Scotland's roads are up 9%. So, it seems that we can show that having more cameras and sending out more automated fines doesn't make your roads safer. In fact in England Essex saw the greatest increase in road deaths in the last year for which figures are available and this period also so them increase their cameras numbers of the greatest percentage of any county in England and Wales. When all the figures are examined it may well be possible to say that there is a direct correlation between number of cameras per mile and number of deaths per mile, though I have never seen anyone do that sum as yet.

In light of the facts why do we criminalise a high proportion of society for no documented gain to society?

angrynorth

Iains right. (Twice in one week! )

You speed = you break the law. Yes its only a minor offence and yes it does happen too often but before you set off you know the laws and should therefore stick to them. Don't whine about it because you got caught, underhand police tactics or not. During the day and on most roads and conditions the limits are right even in some cases where they hover between 20-30mph.

Iain Young

That is still pretty meaningless. There are still many factors which could affect the results. For example, there may be a higher percentage of careful drivers in Durham than there are in say Brimingham, and so the results would be very different whether there were cameras present or not. Also it may have a lower density population and so accidents are less likely statistically to happen.

The only way of determining whether cameras have a positive effect is to remove them and see if the accident / death rates go up in those specific areas.

I must agree that the most sensible way forward however would be a better and more visible police presence on the roads combined with better driver training.