Safe Speed Forums

Speed cameras save £8m in a year

Speed cameras across the Northumbria Police force area have saved health and emergency services millions of pounds over the past year, it is claimed.
The area's Safety Camera Partnership says fewer deaths and injuries at camera sites saved more than £8m - nearly double that received in fines.

There were three fewer deaths, 18 fewer serious injuries and 27 fewer minor injuries reported at camera sites.

The area's 45 fixed cameras raised almost £4.3m over the past 12 months.

Casualty reduction

Project manager Ray King said: "There will always be those who want to focus on the money issue, at the expense of everything else.

"Safety cameras play an important part in reducing the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads, as these figures show.

"We would rather not be taking anyone's money to achieve an improvement in casualty reduction, but unfortunately there are some drivers who feel it's acceptable to break the limit, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary."

Mr King said the introduction of forward facing cameras at seven collision hot spots had a marked effect on speeds.

He added: "This year we are trialling vehicle activated signs at specific sites to determine their effectiveness.

"We will also seek to influence driver behaviour further through a combination of publicity, education and speed enforcement."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4384620.stm

Just the usual drivel then.

Jolly good, presumably they can afford to give the fines back then.

I would be very interested to see how they calculate that 8 million.

What an excellent name for a scamerati project manager. I wonder if he is in charge of Project ITIN? If so, he will be Ray King it in

is that figure before or after the 10 grand it cost them to prosecute a driver for eating an apple.

silly tw*ts

so when is "driving without due care" not? Do you think it's safe to be turning corners one handed? The only reason it cost 10 grand is because the woman (and her idiot lawyer who should have known better) decided to fight the obvious.

well they'll claim it's, say x hours of emergency services time * emergency services pay rates. What they don't mention of course is that they get paid regardless of whether they're called out or not so the saving, if any, would just be the cost of any medicines/materials used. Saying that you've saved £1000 doesn't sound quite as impressive though.

Good, I'm glad someone agrees with me on this.

It's easy to assume that 'what a driver is doing with their hands' should be taken as evidence of carelessness. But it's almost never in itself evidence of carelessness beyond a reasonable doubt.

If it was, we'd HAVE TO prosecute people for changing gear. If steering one handed is the problem, then what's the difference?

The truth is that carelessness takes place in the brain, not in the hands. Sometimes (and it may be true in this case) the hands evidence the failing in the brain. But equally sometimes they do not.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

for starters you don't change gears while turning a corner - if you are then that is rather careless. Also changing gears is a quick, planned operation, hand off the wheel, change, hand back on the wheel. Holding an apple, or any other object, means that hand is not useable. Just how do you safely negotiate a 90deg turn, taking into account the possibility of having to avoid something around the corner, one handed? If you try to claim that this is either possible or more to the point safe then I'm afraid you've lost me.
(I'm deliberately ignoring the case of disabled drivers because they'll have specially adapted cars and driving styles).

edit: I also believe that the police should be booking motorists who drive one handed, or worse, one fingered down motorways (chicken wingers as I like to call them) and people who insist on reversing their hand and holding the back of the wheel while turning. There is just no way that they are in full control of their cars.

My point is just that we're looking at the wrong part of the body. It's not the hands that tell the story.

This is one of those things that trivialises the subject of road safety. 'Stick to the speed limit' and 'hold the wheel with two hands' are insignificant compared with 'careful and responsible behaviour'. We're tending to use them (the trivial things) as replacements (or substitutes or proxies) for the big things.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

yes, there's far too many excuses being made for bad driving on this site (the camera van being the most obvious recent one).

but if you're not in full control of the vehicle then how can you be careful and responsible? Do we just ignore the basics - and holding the wheel is about as basic as it gets?

I don't think it's basic at all. It's almost peripheral. Basics are 'skills attitudes and responsibilities'.

The mantra about 'full control of the vehicle' is a misleading and weak attempt to justify claims made about peripheral things. 'Full control' is truely a state of mind and has nothing to do with your grip on the steering wheel. However, on occasion state of mind failures may be evidenced by the way someone is holding the wheel.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Then you misunderstood. I see little or nothing that excuses bad driving here.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

so what happens when you hit that patch of oil or a tyre blows out and you're holding the wheel with one finger?

so saying a camera van caused some plonker to take his eyes off the road and make rude gestures isn't excusing his poor driving? Saying that fences cause rear-end accidents at roundabouts is not excusing poor driving?
Saying that speed cameras cause accidents due to panic braking isn't excusing poor driving?

edit: note I'm not saying that there aren't other problems with all the above 'causes'.

'One finger' might be evidence of the 'state of mind' failure.

In most cases where we hit patches of oil of have blow outs we react by tightening our grip and responding to circumstances.

And the true bottom line is that while oil patches and blow outs figure as minor contributory factors in the crash stats, they are comparatively rare. We don't know who many of these cases might have been exacerbated by poor steering wheel grip, but even if it was 50% we'd still be looking at well under 5% of crashes (and probably 0.5%). Meanwhile mental failures are responsible for at least 95% of crashes.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Correct. None of those discussions excuse poor driving.

But while we have poor drivers (and of course we always will) it's most important that the authorities avoid tipping them over the edge and making their poorness into a tragedy.

Making drivers better is an entirely different and highly worthy subject.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

crashes or fatalities? How many actual crashes (note crashes, not fatalities) could be avoided if one of the parties took better evasive action?


bit hard to tighten your grip if your hand isn't on the wheel to start with.



but again where talking simple failures here. Not because a driver's car control isn't up there with Schumacher's. Here it's keeping your eyes on the road and keeping a suitable gap to the car in front. Simple things that anyone who drives should be doing and hopefully was at least taught to do. We shouldn't try to find excuses for not managing the basics. Ok, so there's a fence near a roundabout but this country's roads are covered in hedge rows. How dangerous is that? Extending your logic we should cut them all down because people can't be taught that they need to be able to stop in the distance they can see to be clear.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign