Safe Speed Forums

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Speed cameras can't read my thoughts
By Harry Mount
(Filed: 05/08/2004)


If everything goes according to plan, I'll be banned from driving today. In Taunton at midday, the Avon and


Somerset magistrates are sitting to consider whether, a few months ago, I drove at 71mph along a stretch of the M4 that had been temporarily restricted to 60mph for roadworks. If they decide I'm guilty, that's another three points to add to the nine I've already picked up. The chances are I'll be banned for a year.

However good and kind the Taunton magistrates are - and I'm sure they're very good and very kind - they are given hardly any room for manoeuvre by the law, and I'm sure that, by lunchtime, I'll be off the road for having gone 11mph over the limit four times in three years.

The first time I got snapped by a camera - 51mph in a 40mph zone in Richmond - I tried to appeal. The road was the feeder off the M3 that leads into London. Before you know it, you're being forced down from 70mph to 40mph, while still on a three-lane road. There were a few old signs, concealed by thornbushes, but there was no time to notice them before - flash, flash - I'd been caught.

I didn't stand a chance of winning my appeal, even with the thornbush defence. The good, kind magistrates of Richmond looked at the crystal-clear photo of me barrelling along an empty road on a sunny day, gave me three points and doubled my fine for having the cheekiness to appeal.

It wasn't their fault. They have as little room for interpretation of the law as the Taunton magistrates - i.e. next to none.

Speeding charges are dropped only in exceptional circumstances. Like if you're driving the Home Secretary to a speaking engagement in Exeter. Four years ago, the Chief Crown Prosecutor for Avon and Somerset let Jack Straw's Special Branch driver off for belting down the southbound carriageway of the M5 at 103mph - incidentally, near that jewel of the West Country, lovely, scenic Taunton.

The prosecutor's excuse was that there had been an incident involving other cars nearby that concerned the driver; and that the then Home Secretary was one of the very small number of people known to be at significant risk of lethal attack.

If you're not one of that very small number of people, there's no choice. You get photographed - and, so the official thinking goes, the speed camera never lies - so you get fined and have your licence endorsed.

There are no other offences like it. As any junior barrister knows - even Tony Blair, who practised law for eight years, or Jack Straw, who did it for just two - most offences are made up of two parts: the mens rea (an evil intent) and the actus reus (an evil act). When you're caught by a speed camera, it doesn't matter whether you had the mens rea - the intention to speed - or not. All that matters in the eyes of the law is that you did it, irrespective of your state of mind.

There are quite a few offences like this, called strict liability offences, where your intentions are neither here nor there. Strict liability offences are usually to do with things such as health and safety, or road traffic; quasi-criminal cases, where there's little stigma attached to the violation.

So, for people who've done the most awful things, such as murder, there are all sorts of excuses about your state of mind that lessen the offence; such as the fact that you're a glue-sniffer or a domestic violence victim. But, when it comes to little things, like going 11mph too quickly down the M4, the law doesn't allow any mitigation over your intentions.

It all seems to be the wrong way round. If you've been really naughty, you're allowed an excuse. But if you've done something footling, well, it doesn't matter if you've been slapped on the wrist a little too hard, does it? It's not like you're going to jail or anything.

And, of all the strict liability offences, speed camera convictions are unique. Not only do you not need the evil intent in order to get prosecuted, but the way in which the cameras are set up - on long motorway straights or, like me in the West Country and in Richmond, just after a badly signed change from one speed limit to another - they are also specially designed to catch those with no evil intent.

That's why the Tories at last seem to be doing something sensible in their promise to raise the speed limit to 80mph on those open straights and to audit speed cameras to gauge their effectiveness; particularly at a time when the Government is road-testing a new form of futuristic priggishness - a car that breathalyses you and won't let you drive if you've had a small glass of wine, a quarter of the current legal limit.

No one could take against convicting somebody who drives a car at high speed through a town centre when their recklessness is so great that it practically amounts to the same as evil intent. In the same way, there's nothing wrong in putting up speed cameras in accident blackspots.

But the vast majority of the 5,000 speed cameras in the country are not at accident black spots and they don't catch people who are driving dangerously. Instead, they are precisely positioned to catch out generally safe, conscientious drivers.

To legislate by speed camera flies in the face of English legal history. Criminal law has accumulated over the past millennium as a combination of statute and common law to be interpreted by judges to give as fair a verdict as possible. It was never meant to be a device to catch out the normally law-abiding who are subject to the universally human fault of absent-mindedness, and, occasionally, let the speedo-meter creep up to 80mph on an empty motorway in high summer.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

There was a time when I may have argued that even safe, concientious drivers can cause accidents and kill people, but that would be dramatising and besides, I've had a shift of perspective.

My wife is a safe concientious driver in fact I would swallow my pride and say that in terms of general awareness, not placing her vehicle in conflict with others and generally reading the warning signs she is better than me.

But she got pinged by a Talivan on a wide open road in Telford last year. There was an initial period of confusion when the NIP arrived, she'd been driving my car and immediately blamed me Imagine my smug satisfaction when we deduced that she had been driving at the time

Anyway it made me think this. Are the roads now safer by an n'th degree because my wife got a speeding ticket, or have the Shropshire Camera Partnership simply created another disgruntled motorist

Answers No, Yes.

So I now support the general thrust of the SS argument because I feel it is better to try and raise the overall standard of our driving through education etc rather than beating people with big sticks. It ain't making our roads safer, it's just pissing good honest people off and where's the sense in that?

<Kicks soapbox back under table>

This has caused me to remember an incident I wittnessed aout 4 years ago. (Not entirely related to the thread but bare with me...)

I was waiting for a lift one evening a few years back in the middle of town. I was stood on the pavement at the site of a road. The carriageway of the side I was on (westbound) was clear and the other site (eastbound) was tailed back quite a way. While i was there, a police chase came past me. The offending motorist (being chased) was driving down the pavement on the other side of the road in the oposite direction to the traffic flow. They clipped about 10 cars in the line of traffic, barged through onto the carriageway and continued. A patrol car shortly followed on the correct side of the road and continues to persue. As i was on hand I helped a couple of the motorists - many were shocked and a number of young passengers hurt. I later found out that the crims being chased mde it to the main rain station and dissappeared on a train. The police never caught up with them.

As I said, a number of motorists and passengers were shocked/hurt and a lot of people ended up out of pocket to get bumpers/wing mirrors/bodywork fixed.

In this situation, even the patrol car couldn't apprehend the criminals.

My question is simple, how do many police authorities Road safety strategies deal with this kind of event. AND how do they compare this kind of event to someone caught speeding, for ecample at 70 in a 60 limit?

The answer is equally simple: send the rightful owner of the criminal's probably stolen car a NIP for speeding, that should sort it out.

In the recent issue of Care on the Road magazine, Damien Green was questioned on how much revenue was raised from speed camera use. He quoted that it was £6million a year.

On the subject of badly structured speed limits. I drove through Grasmere, Cumbria a few weeks ago. I saw a 40mph sign, then twenty yards further on 30mph and 100 yards on NSP applies.

head north of the A4 on the A355 in Slough and you can see, when coming down off the railway bridge, 6 bits of yellow. a 20 sign, a 30 sign, another 20, anther 30, a third 20 and a third 30 (it think there is one more pair, but you can't see it as it's round a corner). you can make out the number on the sign at least 2 signs ahead too. How likely given a free run would anyone be to comply with a 20 yard long 20 limit, every 50-100 yards? thankfully as you will hit all the lights at red unless you go at two mph, then you can't really break the 20 limits surrounding them, as by the time you've accelerated from 0 to 20 you're in the 30 limit!

gradual slowing like 60...40...30 with close spacing isn't that bad, and is used on the continent for bad slip roads (usually 130...110...90...70, with the 70 at the start of the slip and the 90 in the deceleration lane and the 110 on the main carriageway with a disclaimer saying it is for the slip) and 70...50...30 is used (with rather too long a deceleration patch) at the M6T toll "plazas"

Simon

Ah yes, Farnham Road, what an absolute drivers delight... Even before you get over the railway (and as you do, wave at the Satchwell buildings on the right, just in case I'm watching ) there's the newly installed islands between there and Three Tuns to negotiate. Fine if the traffic is flowing freely, but the combination of a car transporter parked up on the pavement waiting to offload into the VW dealership plus another wide vehicle trying to squeeze between transporter and island... tailbacks galore. Then there's the fire engines and ambulances heading up from the local station now having to dodge the oncoming traffic heading south, rather than simply being able to slip up the middle of the road between north and southbound traffic, and being totally stuck if the traffic is too heavy in both directions to give them space to weave in and out.

Let's not even get onto the bloody gatso supposedly guarding the pedestrian island, which serves only to make all the northbound drivers spend so much time checking their speed that they usually don't notice the pedestrians trying to use the island... isn't it strange how I feel so much safer, and how much easier it is, crossing the southbound lane of traffic where the drivers aren't being distracted by the camera and where the traffic flows smoothly with increased spacing between vehicles.

Chris