News: For immediate release
 
 

The resignation of the Norfolk's speed camera boss calls into question the management of all our speed cameras says Safe Speed.

It has been announced today that Barry Parnell, manager of the Norfolk Casualty Reduction Partnership (NCRP), resigned after seeing a report intended to ensure that Norfolk's speed cameras met the rules.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign said: "We must suspend all speed camera operations pending a complete audit of speed cameras, the way they are operated and their effects on road safety. We know that something was bad enough in Norfolk to force a resignation, We know that road deaths have just gone up. We know that there are peculiarities in the statistics used to justify speed cameras and we know that the rules for speed camera placement are fatally flawed."

Paul continued: "If the rules were flouted in Norfolk, and it took an investigation by the Chief Constable to find out, how can we have any confidence that other areas have their cameras properly administer and installed according to the guidelines? Vital public confidence in the system has been well and truly lost."

In a recent report for the BBC Radio "Today Programme", Professor Emeritus Mervyn Stone said (regarding the partnership based speed camera programme): "The emphasis on political acceptability has led the program down a cul de sac in which essential public trust has been lost. The mistakes already made should be openly recognised, and the program should be subjected to a root and branch rethink."

It should came as no surprise that Safe Speed says: "Let's make speed cameras as unacceptable as drink driving."

See the Safe Speed web site for further information:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk

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Notes and links for Editors

• Press report on the resignation: report at http://new.edp24.co.uk

• Flaw in the rules for speed camera placement: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/rules.html

• Fraudulent claims of speed camera benefits: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/pr127.html

• The Stone Report: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/stone.html

 
Fatalities figures for GB 1950 to 2003 (2004 projected)

• Excel spreadsheet: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/6800.xls

• The same spreadsheet in a zip archive: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/6800.zip

• The spreadsheet includes exact web references to official data sources and a range of interesting graphs.

About Safe Speed:

Since setting up Safe Speed in 2001, Paul Smith, 49, an advanced motorist and road safety enthusiast, and a professional engineer of 25 years UK experience, has carried out about 5,000 hours of research into the overall effects of speed camera policy on UK road safety. We believe that this is more work in more detail than anything carried out by any other organisation. Paul's surprising conclusion is that overall speed cameras make our roads more dangerous. Paul has identified and reported a number of major flaws and false assumptions in the claims made for speed cameras, and the whole "speed kills"  system of road safety.     

The inescapable conclusion is that we should urgently return to the excellent road safety policies that gave us in the UK the safest roads in the World in the first place.     

Safe Speed does not campaign against speed limits or appropriate enforcement of motoring laws, but argues vigorously that automated speed enforcement is neither safe nor appropriate.     
      

Contact Safe Speed:     

web: http://www.safespeed.org.uk     
email : psmith@safespeed.org.uk    
telephone: 01862 832000 anytime.     
mobile: 07799 045553     
note: the mobile does not work well at our office. Always try land line first.     
Location: North Scotland     

We are available for press and media interviews.