Safe Speed Forums

The safety camera partnership may be a load of cobblers, but the finances are ok:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_rdsafety/documents/page/dft_rdsafety_610840.pdf

Look at item: 31.

101% ?

Only under the current rules.

As of april they will have to rely on the grant. The blank cheque gets ripped up

_________________
Speed camera policy Kills

They are only getting rid of them because they are planning the introduction of road pricing.

When you have a GPS tracking device installed and they know where you are and how fast you are going, camera's will be redundant.

Prepare for battle - cameras are just a skirmish.

Even I can't see how any administration could introduce GPS based speed monitoring and still be in office a week later. It would be akin to the poll-tax.

The fines would run into quite literally billions of pounds a year. Let's hope Gordon Brown isn't a reader

You have to remember that Tony Blair doesn't care and is in reality a puppet to business, Gordon Brown is a communist who believes if he makes us all destitute we will vote socialist.

It is a dangerous combination. The problem gets worse when you consider David Cameron also supports the idea. There is a lot of money to be made from road pricing and he smells some of it.

So, which administration is your choice at the 2009 elections? All the main three are backing road pricing.

Where do we go from here?

Another article here - Wilts & Swindle this time. Note the carefully picked examples of what £42,000 could buy.

http://www.thisiswiltshire.co.uk/displa ... _fines.php

Government set to pocket speed fines
By Daniel Knowles

ROAD safety funding is to drop across Swindon and Wiltshire over the next four years at the same time the Government creams off almost £1m in fines.

In a letter sent to Swindon Council, the Department of Transport says it will be giving the borough £493,909 in the 2007-08 financial year in a revamp of road safety funding.

At the moment, the Swindon and Wiltshire Road Safety Camera Partnership takes the camera running costs from fines before sending the rest on the Government.

Under the changes, the partnership will be given an annual grant and the fines go direct to the Government.

But that grant falls short of what is raised in fines - meaning the Government is taking off close to £1m from Swindon and county motorists.

At the same time, the road safety grant is expected to drop by £42,000 from £493,000 to £451,000 by 2010-11.
Advertisement continued...

Swindon Council cabinet member for transport, Coun Peter Greenhalgh, has criticised the cuts, saying it is another indirect tax rip-off.

The £42,000 being cut would pay for 10 flashing warning signs or another traffic education officer.

It would also pay for five zebra crossings, or more than 25 anti-slip strips on residential roads.

"It's another example of Swindon being short changed," Coun Greenhalgh (Con, Freshbrook and Grange Park) said.

"We take road safety very seriously but the Government seem to be taking the revenue.

"In 2004-05 they raised in £3m fines. They are taking £800,000 off the top.

"There are no other grants."

The latest figures released by the Government show 50,901 drivers were caught speeding in the year to March 2005, raising £3.05m in fines.

The Department of Transport says the new funding arrangements are fairer and give local councils more flexibility.

"The Road Safety Grant is a new funding mechanism to help local authorities improve road safety," a spokeswoman for the department said.

"For the first time, it allows local authorities to work with a set amount of funding that can be used on any measure they consider necessary.

"The grant will total £110m a year for its first two years, and has been allocated to individual authorities based on their local road safety need."

Swindon and Wiltshire Road Safety Camera Partnership has eight fixed cameras and 105 mobile camera sites.

Partnership manager Dave Frampton said the new funding structure removed any suspicion that councils got more money the more fines they issued.

He said the partnership was interested in reducing injuries and road deaths, not raising money.

I see Dave Frampton raises a point at the end that I was going to; why should certain areas be rewarded for fining more motorists when other areas are mose deserving of the funds to improve road safety (not install more caermas to compete in the fines-raising stakes!).

Reading the full article, what a brilliant idea 'road scoring' is!!

In reality, this system applied nationwide is likely to be a much better way of improving road safety than strict enforcement of often arbitrary speed limits.

The fact that a range of factors, hopefully involving things like hazard densities, reduction of coefficient of friction of the road surface in adverse weather conditions, hazards hidden by corners etc will be taken into account. I guess things like blind corners/high hedges shouldn't be taken into account, since these are highly visible to drivers, and though we cannot count on all drivers recognising the 'hazard multiplier' effect they have, being too 'coddling' with the ratings could result in them being as devalued as speed cameras are.

Ideally a number of scores could be given to, and displayed on, a road. Perhaps icons from a finite set that give the major cause of accidents for the next stretch of road (I know we already have warnings for specific hazards, this would be an extension, not a replacement). Care would have to be taken not to push too much information at the driver, which could reult in both distraction, and missing certain vital pieces of data amongst the masses. Perhaps just the three most common causes of accidents/fatalities on the road could be prominently displayed, say, every 5 miles as default, and more frequently as individual locations required, and at junctions etc.

I really like this idea (can you tell?) as it takes a positive step to actually improving road safety, rather than drawing a line in the sand purely for the purpose of fining those that step over it.

This bit in the article worried me a bit:

"This doesn't mean the road is necessarily dangerous, but there is a potential for head-on crashes because of a lack of disincentives to overtake and a variety of other potential risks."

The concept that overtaking is some sort of crime and cannot possibly be done safely is gaining in popularity at a fast rate. Whilst it IS true that if overtaking were done away with there would be less head-ons, surely we can can do better than that in terms of education and attitudinal change?

_________________
I won't slave for beggar's pay,
likewise gold and jewels,
but I would slave to learn the way
to sink your ship of fools