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BAN SPEED CAMERAS SAY ROAD SAFETY CAMPAIGNERS
Saturday August 9,2008
By Mark Blacklock

Road safety campaigners yesterday called for speed cameras to be banned after police slashed road deaths by 40 per cent without them.

Only two forces in Britain refuse to operate fixed speed traps – and both have recorded significant reductions in road deaths.

Official statistics just released show that police across Britain have quadrupled fines in the last decade to more than £106million a year.

The money collected by Durham Constabulary – just £169,000 in 2006 – is tiny by comparison because the force does not operate the fixed camera traps. Yet at the same time the force has cut its road death toll from 44 in 1998 to 26 last year – a fall of more than 40 per cent.

Neighbouring police forces which operate cameras have fined motorists millions.

Northumbria, which operates 45 fixed cameras and 104 mobile sites, collected more than £3million, and Cleveland issued fines of £1.1million.

The only other force in the country to have banned fixed cameras is nearby North Yorkshire – and road deaths there are down by 15 per cent.

All of the remaining forces operate speed cameras, hated by drivers and motoring organisations which regard them as a revenue-raising device rather than a safety measure.

And although the death toll nationally has dropped from 3,421 in 1998 to 3,172 in 2006 – a reduction of seven per cent – it is far below the levels achieved in North Yorkshire and Durham.

Claire Armstrong, of the anti-fixed camera campaign group Safe Speed, said: “Speed cameras are not saving lives.” Her organisation wants to see speed cameras removed and replaced with more officers on patrol, as is the case in Durham.

Ms Armstrong said: “The police presence on the road is no longer there. You can drive up and down all day and not see a single police car. It is very worrying.”

She added: “Speed cameras just target the ordinary, law-abiding motorist who goes a few miles an hour over the limit but isn’t driving dangerously.

“The result is that the relationship between the police and the public is now at an all-time low.”

In Durham – which has just one mobile speed camera, as well as patrol cars fitted with speed detection equipment – the force’s policy is to operate “common sense” policing and work with drivers to improve road safety.

PC Dave Nixon, the county’s casualty reduction officer, said: “We police by public consent. The decision was taken at the highest level that we could do this in a proportionate manner.

“We felt that we could keep our local community on side, so that when we need help on other things, they wouldn’t be reluctant to help us.”

He warned: “That doesn’t mean that we are soft on speeding drivers. But every officer has discretion. Nobody is ever going to turn a blind eye to high speed but we take everything into consideration, including road conditions and the time of day.

“Sometimes a strong warning is all that is required, but if the motorway is under three inches of water and you’re doing 75mph, I’m going to give you a ticket.”

Durham also operates a range of educational programmes to encourage motorists to reduce their speed. One-day lessons are offered to every school pupil aged 16 in the county.

PC Nixon said: “We target young people just before they’re about to get their licence.

“The course is all about changing their attitudes to speed and getting them to pass that message on to others, including their parents.

“We are also intelligence-led. We will target rogue, uninsured drivers and drink and drug drivers, who are more likely to have an accident.

“We get a lot of help from the public and they will tell us if someone is driving illegally.”

Senior officers in North Yorkshire claim they have cut the death toll by 15 per cent by targeting rogue drivers.

Nearly 12,000 vehicles were stopped as part of Operation Anvil, between March and June, resulting in 208 uninsured vehicles being seized and 105 drink drivers arrested.

By the way Claire

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