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We will not hide speed cameras
DAN GRIMMER
06 June 2007 08:42
Norfolk's speed camera bosses have categorically denied they would risk potentially angering motorists by trying to hide its cameras from drivers.
Meredydd Hughes, head of road policing at the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), has suggested the cameras should be made “less conspicuous”.
He claimed it was “strange” that the cameras could be so easily identified.
Mr Hughes, Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police, said: “We need to think about whether greater compliance will be delivered by using technology in a less conspicuous way.
“I might put up Neighbourhood Watch signs but I don't tell burglars when I am specifically running an anti-crime operation.”
But Bryan Edwards, spokesman for the Norfolk Safety Camera Partnership, which catches an average of three drivers an hour who pay a £60 penalty notice, said he was surprised at the comments.
He said: “I think we can confidently say that there is no intention of Norfolk changing the colours of our cameras or making them less conspicuous.
“The idea of them is that they are a deterrent and that is why we paint them yellow, so people can see them. They are not money-making machines - they are there to help with casualty reduction and we are doing that.
“I know that on the continent they can hide them, but I think that would be a retrograde step here, because that is not what they are meant to be about.
“In Norfolk we are very pleased but not complacent, that, working with the county council, we have reduced the number of people being killed or seriously injured on the county's roads ahead of the target for 2010.”
At present there is no legal requirement for speed cameras to be made visible, and a speeding offence is not invalidated if they are not.
But the latest Department for Transport guidance continues to recommend that speed cameras should be yellow, marked with warning signs and only sited at accident blackspots.
Paul Smith, founder of campaign group SafeSpeed.org.uk, said: “Meredydd Hughes should know far better than this. Rather than hide speed cameras, he should be calling for them to be scrapped.
“The problem is that speed cameras come with adverse side effects. Hiding the cameras will simply make the side effects worse.
“Speed cameras make no sense. They cannot distinguish between safe and dangerous behaviours. You can't measure safe driving in miles per hour.
“There's one certain consequence of hiding speed cameras and that's more dead people. Don't do it.”
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