Speed cameras in the spotlight

1:15pm Friday 23rd January 2004

THE vexed question of speed cameras is adding fuel to a feeling among many motorists that they are a persecuted breed.

Whether or not Cumbria County Council decides today whether to introduce permanently installed cameras at what are perceived to be speed black spots, there is no doubt that drivers are getting increasingly frustrated by what they see as entrapments designed to raise revenues rather than a genuine attempt to improve road safety.

The authorities, on the other hand, are adamant that speed kills and reducing speed is the best way to cut the number of fatal and serious injury accidents on our roads.

Both sides of the argument are busy marshalling facts to support their cases.

The Government insists that an average reduction of one mile per hour on rural, single carriageway roads, such as those that predominate in Cumbria, would reduce the number of crashes by between four and nine per cent and that a two mph reduction in average speeds across the country's network would save 300 lives a year.

Such statistics seldom hold up under scrutiny. They are likely to be distorted by one-off accidents, in which three or four people die. Such a tragedy in Cumbria would influence the analysis by 50 per cent or more.

The Association of British Drivers accuses the Government of a misinformation campaign, in turn claiming that far from improving road safety, speed traps have actually stopped or slowed the annual five per cent reduction in road casualties which has been the trend over the last 30 years as roads and cars have become generally safer.

The local representative even pointed to figures on Cumbria Safety Camera Partnership's own web site showing that the number of road deaths in the county had risen from 49 in 2002 to 55 in 2003 the year mobile cameras were introduced.

Such trading of numbers is unlikely to sway the debate either way. When a subject becomes as emotive as this one, then people will believe what they want to believe.

The answer needs to be found in commonsense and persuasion.

Monitoring of the A590 has clocked cars, motorbikes and vans going more than 100 mph. Such excessive speeds are obviously reckless and anyone caught would expect to have the book thrown at them by the courts.

But that is not the category of motorist that is most troubled by the spread of cameras.

Most fury seems to come from experienced, older motorists who have become used to the lax enforcement of speed limits over the years and come to treat them as advice rather than legal instructions.

Certainly the tradition of police forces allowing a margin of leeway over when to prosecute has added to this relaxed attitude.

If the authorities want to win hearts and minds they need to concentrate on re-education of fringe offenders, while clamping down hard on the downright dangerous. A scale of fines based on the degree of transgression would help.

They need to make sure that cameras are at sites where their need is demonstrable. The A590 at High Newton, for example, would be one such site likely to receive widespread support.

Further they need to make the cameras as noticeable as possible, so they are seen as a deterrent designed to save lives, and not, as many people seem to believe, a disguised revenue earner for the hard-pressed police or treasury.

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