dcbwhaley wrote:
The camera income should be ring fenced for driver training. Excellent feedback mechanism there - as driving standards rise there would be less income but also less need for training.
I beg to differ.
The cameras that generate the greatest income are placed where people feel the most comfortable going faster than the posted speed 'limit' because the posted speed 'limit' is too low for the prevailing conditions.
Drivers who get caught by any such camera would be sent to driver training of one of two flavors:
a) COAST-based. Such training might actually INCREASE - but could not possibly decrease - the likelihood of that driver getting caught by another 'hot camera', either there or somewhere else. COAST-drivers need their speedometer less and less, while the only thing a camera cares about is road speed
b) road speed-based. This might decrease the likelihood of that driver getting caught by another 'hot camera', but it might also increase the likelihood of that driver getting into an accident - possibly at another camera site, possibly anywhere where the driver has to juggle multiple visual inputs of rapidly fluctuating potential consequence.
Neither option is of any interest to the government or the camera industry (pardon my redundancy). Profit margins would shrink. The point is to put up a camera where most people feel the posted speed 'limit' is too slow for the prevailing conditions, sit back and collect.
With option 'a', sooner or later, too many people would start asking questions about why the government is saying one thing by using cameras in conjunction with retarded speed 'limits', and then offering remedial training which contradicts cameras married to such 'limits'; speaking out of both sides of their mouth.
Option 'b', on the other hand, would be too high a price to pay. Collisions would go up. Even if Ks went down, SIs, Is, and fenderbenders would go up way too quickly. The truth would become too clear for a majority which would metastasize in number at a potentially dangerous rate.
Right now, enough people believe the government's spiel about road safety - take a look at how many naysayers exist here now, despite the fact that most of us know that the only thing the speedometer can possibly help us avoid, is a fine. The tenuous balance must not be toyed with by educating the masses in any way.
Recently reread 1984 while in Deutschland ... didn't need my speedometer there either ...