Safe Speed Forums

Suburban rat-run speeders targeted
By Andy Dixon Published: 03 May, 2011

Stevenson Road in Wester Inshes is the first to be targeted in a new crackdown on speeding motorists. Katy Sutherland

SUBURBAN speeders are being targeted in a new crackdown by police responding to road safety concerns from Inverness residents.

Several roads have been pinpointed with some being targeted by the speed camera vehicles used as a "last resort" by the Northern Safety Camera Partnership.
The camera vans normally operate on trunk roads like the A9 and A96.

This week the agency - which works in tandem with Northern Constabulary to respond to community concerns - will monitor motorists on the 30mph Stevenson Road, Wester Inshes.
The measures have been welcomed by the Wester Inshes community and local councillors, who say the road has turned into "a race track" since being linked to Milton of Leys and Inshes last year.
"It is one of several sites identified in the Inverness area for enforcement action following concerns from residents in relation to the speed of vehicles," said the city's police area commander, temporary chief inspector Graeme Murdoch.
"Fixed cameras within an urban area become common knowledge very quickly but by deploying a camera van or our own officers, we can focus on particular areas and move around, which is probably a more effective way of dealing with it."

He refused to name other streets to be targeted but warned speeding motorists that his officers were focused on the issue.

Claire Stirling, of Wester Inshes Crescent, who is expecting her second baby, is backing the initiative and fears for the safety of children in the area.
"Since the road to Milton of Leys opened it has been used as a circuit by boy racers, so anything that will deter that is a good thing," she said. "There are a lot of kids around here and we don't want to worry about folk racing about the place."

Inverness South councillors John Holden and Roy Pederson both branded the road a race track.
"The lack of accidents is probably due more to luck than speeding being discouraged," Councillor Pedersen said.

Fellow ward member Thomas Prag hopes the cameras will help expose the scale of the problem, while his colleague Jim Crawford wants to avoid the route becoming an established rat run for vehicles leaving the A9 to avoid the busy Inshes roundabout.
"It's not just outsiders speeding, half the time it is locals," Councillor Crawford said.

The mobile speed camera will operate periodically in the street over the next 12 months.
"We have to educate people to observe the speed limit, which is there for their safety as well as others," said former Inverness South Community Council chairman Bob Roberts, who added that the concerns date back several years.

Chrystall Rutherford, communications manager for the partnership, confirmed the van's presence in Wester Inshes was a last resort and was only sanctioned after all other measures failed to tackle the problem.

Anyone caught speeding will face a £60 fine and three penalty points on their licence or a court appearance.

andrew.dixon@inverness-courier.co.uk

The term "rat run" annoys me.

The term "rat run" annoys me. Roads are built to take vehicles who have paid to use them, so why should they not be used?

Leaving aside the point that vehicles do not pay for roads - your comment is rather like asking why cyclists and pedestrians, who have contributed to the cost of building motorways, are not allowed to use them. You are presupposing that all roads are equal which is patently not the case. Some roads - motorways - are built to carry a large volume of high speed vehicles and prohibiting slower traffic facilitates that. Other roads are built for a low volume of slow traffic with a high proportion of it non motorised. Allowing unrestricted use of such roads renders them unfit for their designed purpose as surely as allowing cows on a motorway would render it unfit for its designed purpose. Yet other highways are designed only for the use of foot traffic despite being partly paid for by motorists. Do you demand the right to be allowed to attempt to drive on those?

I beg to differ

I beg to differ, the revenue that is paid by vehicle owners, although not directly used for roads, is far greater than the amount spent on roads.

Still, I do accept it's all "general taxation" - after all, I've just paid for a nice cycle path round here that I can't drive on!

You'd be wrong though. Fuel duty, VED and VAT on fuel are not hypothecated for use on roads in any way shape or form.

Good potted history here:

http://ipayroadtax.com/no-such-thing-as ... road-fund/

Your point being? Non of the revenue collected from beer drinkers is spent on breweries and pubs; nor do the beer drinkers complain about that state of affairs.

You'd be wrong though. Fuel duty, VED and VAT on fuel are not hypothecated for use on roads in any way shape or form.

Good potted history here:

http://ipayroadtax.com/no-such-thing-as ... road-fund/

It looks like we're getting the same failed arguments from the same blinkered people.

I'm not even going to mention the around 40 billion per annum we pay in fuel tax, or what percentage of that gets spent on the roads.

Suffice to say, the average motorist contributes far more to the roads than does the average cyclist or pedestrian.

Unless you can show that not one penny of Fuel duty, VED and VAT on fuel is spent on the roads. But that inturn begs the question of what it is spent on.

You missed my point entirely.

If you drive a car then you pay a disproportionate amount of tax - compared to your fellow man (or woman) on average.

Suffice to say, the average motorist contributes far more to the roads than does the average cyclist or pedestrian.

And I pay more tax than a good 90% of the population, but that doesn't give me the right to jump in the front of the queue at the library or receive special treatment in a hopsital.