Safe Speed Forums

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 89,00.html

Go slow: police win the right to camouflage speed cameras

By Ben Webster

The prominent yellow boxes may be harder to identify from next year

MOTORISTS face the return of hidden speed cameras after rules governing their siting and visibility cease to be enforced from April 2007.

Camera partnerships, which include police and local authorities, will be able to repaint yellow cameras to make them blend into the background.

They will also be able to install cameras where there is a speeding problem but little history of crashes.

At present the partnerships are bound by strict rules issued by the Department for Transport. The cameras must be painted bright yellow and be visible from at least 60m (200ft) away. They can be installed only at sites where there have been at least three collisions causing death or serious injury and three causing slight injury within a kilometre in the previous three years.

Many partnerships believe that the rules are too restrictive. Last autumn, Richard Brunstrom, the Chief Constable of North Wales Police, said that many more lives would be saved if there were more flexibility in camera location.

He said: “Parents often write to us and ask us to put a camera outside a school because the traffic is so dangerous. It’s very difficult to write back and say, ‘Please let us know when your son is killed and then we can consider putting a camera there.’ ”

Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, said in December that partnerships would no longer be able to keep the cash from camera fines to pay for more cameras. They will get grants from a central road safety fund to pay for cameras or alternative measures such as new markings or humps.

Ian Bell, the camera liaison officer for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said that regional differences were likely. “If a highway authority wants to install more cameras and they have the money there will be nothing to stop them. They may decide to put cameras in places the criteria do not currently allow, such as in villages and around schools.”

Lee Murphy, speed camera manager for Cheshire, said: “If the rules weren’t compulsory we could use cameras to tackle emerging trends rather than waiting for the minimum number of collisions.”

A Department of Transport spokesman said: “Local authorities will have freedom to use cameras where appropriate and where they see fit. But we do not want to see a return to the bad old days of cameras being hidden behind trees. We are minded to use guidance to achieve this, but if authorities flout it we will consider regulation. If they want to paint cameras grey we will want to know why.”

Kevin Delaney, the head of road safety at the RAC Foundation, said: “We are concerned that some partnerships will conceal cameras and risk losing the trust of motorists. It makes sense for cameras to be yellow because it slows people down at accident blackspots.”

Brake, a road safety charity, welcomed the new flexibility for partnerships. Mary Williams, its chief executive, said: “Requiring casualties before action is abhorrent and results in needless deaths. We welcome the opportunity for covert enforcement because too many motorists simply slow down briefly for a yellow camera.”
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I don't know what this is about. Someone's flying a kite or stirring a pot...

It sure as hell isn't what the headline would have us think.

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

Despite the obvious fact that someone is flying a kite, I decided it was right for Safe Speed to respond. Accordingly the following PR was issued at 8:17 this morning:

PR291: Hiding speed cameras is dangerous says Safe Speed

news: for immediate release

The Times today reports that from April 2007 camera partnerships may be able
to hide their cameras [1]. This follows recent news that no system of public
accountability exists [2], and that one partnership is cheating the public
with grossly misleading information [3].

In December 2005 the Department for Transport (DfT) announced new funding
plans for camera partnerships with a annual 'road safety grant' of £120m.

Safe Speed believes that hiding cameras would be considerably more dangerous
for the following reasons:

1) Drivers would spend even more time looking out for hard-to-spot cameras and
will have less time available to observe the road ahead.

2) If cameras were hidden they would be even less effective in their primary
stated role of reducing vehicle speeds at accident black spots.

3) Drivers believe that hidden cameras are 'sneaky'. Hiding them again would
accelerate the serious ongoing damage to the Police / public relationship. And
it would further damage confidence in official road safety messages.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "We've seen such frightful behaviour from camera
partnerships over the past couple of years, and we were sure that the new
funding rules were the DfT's way of taking control - via the purse strings."

"Hiding the cameras would be another nail in the coffin of the UK's superior
safe driving culture - DfT may not understand the damage, but we do. It's our
safe driving culture that gave us the safest roads in the world, long before
there were any speed cameras."

"Scrapping all the cameras is presently the most important and most effective
road safety intervention available to government."

<ends>

Notes for editors
=================

[1] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 89,00.html

[2] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SafeSpeedPR/message/137

[3] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SafeSpeedPR/message/141

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

The road safety bill banning the use of radar detectors also makes them harder to spot. What happens when everyone is still sticking to the speed limits everywhere yet accidents and deaths carry on climbing?

Perhaps a few high profile accidents where people have braked sharply for hidden cameras might collect their thoughts. A few dead children being missed due to people looking for cameras would also help.

FFS 80% of accidents are caused by inattention in looking at the wrong thing just before the accident happens! How stupid are the people in charge?

Do they not realise that people who are still driving at the limit will have to check for cameras in case they are falsely accused of speeding?

Good news is because there are no traffic pols the no radar detectors idea won't be enforceable just like the mobile phone or drink drive laws aren't now.

I would be very surprised if they reverted to inconspicuous fixed cameras as it would be a PR disaster. It would also send sales of GPS locators through the roof.

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Go back and have a look at the posting headed "new camera partnership rules"- it's all in there.

Let’s get this in perspective:


So the concerned parents want a means of ensuring traffic isn’t too fast, specifically with use of a highly visible deterrent, but…..

I wonder what these concerned parents would say to that!




Does this mean the rules for netting off can be completely ignored?


The SCPs will be enforcing the law while their methods would be above it.

Netting off or hypothecation, direct grants to SCPs are the root of all evil.

Cameras should be unded out of the police budget purely and simply! we'll see how km brunstrom is when its a choice betwen a proper policeman or a camera.

All fines should go to the courts!

As far as I can see, SCPs are always going to be a serious problem. A single issue approach to road safety is clearly barking, but the problem here is that we have an SCP mindset. We have people who think they are road safety professionals who only know cameras and speed control. It's madness, and it isn't going to stop with different funding arrangements.

We should break up the SCPs to break up the mindset.

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

If cameras get hidden, I can foresee the selfish motorist deliberately mal-adjusting a main beam light to check out "nest boxes".

hidden cameras don't last long - they normally get set on fire.

will they have the funds to replace them a 5th or 6th time - I doubt it

Speed cameras are all about the justification war. One of the major arguments the Government and SCPs use to justify speed cameras is that "they are clearly visible and if you get pinged it's your own fault". If they start hiding them, they will lose the ability to use this argument.

This would be fine if there was massive public confidence in speed cameras, but there isn't. They need every justification they can get. Once people start refusing to pay the fines en-masse, it's game over for their little scam.

From their point of view, starting to hide speed cameras will be like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. If they want to let their greed destroy them, I say leave them to it.

_________________
“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

That really bugged me, and caused me to write to the Times.

Would that be roads where it has proved to be safe to exceed the speed limit then?

Email corespondence with Steve Ladyman:-

From: LADYMAN, Steve
Subject: RE: Return to Camouflaged Speed Cameras

The article in the Times was nonsense. The journalist was told this but wrote it anyway.

SL

This was in reply to;

To: LADYMAN, Steve
Subject: Return to Camouflaged Speed Cameras

I see from the attached article that we are to return to the days of concealed and camouflaged speed cameras.

I thought the intention was to get drivers to slow down, but clearly this shows that the real intention is to entrap motorists to get the revenue from them.

Clearly this government wants to alienate motorists and bikers as much as it possibly can and to totally destroy any residual relationship between drivers and the police.

One thing is for sure, the use of speed cameras is doing nothing to improve road safety and all the genuine evidence increasingly shows that the increased distraction they cause is just resulting in more accidents.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Can't make up my mind on message being sent out

on one hand SCP don't have to meke them obvious, on the other hand this message --

"A Department of Transport spokesman said: “Local authorities will have freedom to use cameras where appropriate and where they see fit. But we do not want to see a return to the bad old days of cameras being hidden behind trees. We are minded to use guidance to achieve this, but if authorities flout it we will consider regulation. If they want to paint cameras grey we will want to know why.”

Or is this just another big scam?

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

See link to;

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6097

Does Steve Ladyman still say "the article in the Times was nonsense" !!