I was thinking about these average speed cameras on my drive into work this morning, as the subject had come up in conversation over the weekend.
If they deployed on long stretches of A roads, then I can see this actually leading to speeding without being caught!
Largely, the area I am in, Vale of Evesham/Worcester the biggest problem drivers have are the other drivers that will drive everywhere at between 35 and 45 regardless of the speed limits. Now, on a NSL road, if a driver manages to overtake after being stuck behind a 'clow coach' for some time, then driving in excess of 60mph for some distance, depending on how long they were held up for, would not affect their average speed!
I am no mathematician, but I bet some our there will be able to more or less calculate how far they can travel in excess of the speed limit!
We need, where appropriate, proper police working all areas and doing what they used to do, stop people who were driving stupidly or dangerously. This did not necessarily include driving at 5 mph or so over the advised limit!
My husband drives a lorry and was caught the other week, driving along a bypass that is not marked as being a dual carriageway, but is wide enough to be and is usually treated as such by most road users. He was doing 50 - a mobile camera unit got him and, of course, there is no discretion. The likelihood is that if that had been a policeman on normal duty, they would not have bothered about him driving at 50 along this stretch of road, when legally and stupidly he should have been doing 40mph, unless he was driving dangerously.
Many lorry drivers find that 40 mph on long stretches of A roads is very monotonous and hypnotic and find their concentration wandering. I think most of us do, especially when we are travelling a well known route. I am sure many people drive to work each day and on arriving cannot remember driving a particular stretch of road. Drivers who are on the road most of the day and are expected to driver between 10 and 20 mph slower than all other road users do get frustrated at the tailbacks, if they stick to the limit they are supposed to; they also get sick of seeing the totally crazy manouvres some will undertake to try and get past, hence putting a lot of people in danger! Cameras do not see things like this!
These drivers need their licence to work and it is not hard to accrue 9 points in a fairly short space of time, if you are not watching your speed, instead of the road, particularly when expected to drive so much slower than the road dictates, whatever vehicle you are driving. Having these discrepancies in speed on the same stretch of road is crazy and far more dangerous in many cases, especially as many car drivers do not realise that lorries are supposed to drive slower.
I am sure someone will come back with, 'Well, it is in the Highway Code' and so it maybe, but how many drivers who have been driving for years, ever pick up an up to date copy of the highway code or check it out online? Very few I should imagine and at the end of the day that is small consolation for the family who loses a loved one, or several, because of a dangerous manouvre carried out in frustration?
Even if drivers do know that lorries are not supposed exceed 40 mph on A roads, that in itself is likely to lead to people emerging dangerously from side roads, in order not to get caught up behind a slow vehicle!
This country has gone totally bonkers!!
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at a fairly invigorating mph 
(Our neighbour failed her L test over that! 
Nerves.. 
I work in the NHS after all .. 
The only records I know and now trust to be accurate .. are.. the ones .. for the patients I treat under BUPA.. 
Of course that the only place where they can use them on motorways/straight dual carriageways or the long straight A515 or some rural bits of the A6 as it run parallel through High Peak.
