Speed Camera Notice (Peculiarities??)

darbooka

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23385094-details/Speed%20cameras%20fail%20to%20halt%20rise%20in%20road%20deaths/article.do

Speed cameras fail to halt rise in road deaths
10.02.07

The number of people killed in road accidents has increased despite the proliferation of speed cameras, according to new Government figures.

A total of 3,210 people died in crashes in the 12 months to September last year, compared with 3,177 in the same period a year earlier.

The Department for Transport statistics come three months after the influential Commons Transport Select Committee said an obsession with cameras was responsible for a 'deplorable' drop in the number of officers patrolling Britain's roads.

Safety campaigners say the increase in fatalities is a wake-up call in the battle to cut casualties and warn that reductions in traffic police have made travelling by car more dangerous.

"Any figures that show an increase against a downward trend ought to be ringing alarm bells in Whitehall, in local authorities and in police headquarters," said Kevin Delaney, former chief of the Metropolitan Police traffic division and now head of road safety at the IAM Motoring Trust.

"The deterrent effect on motorists of a police officer enforcing traffic regulations is incalculable but we are seeing less and less of them.

"Any increase in fatalities has to be worrying and we, the public, ought to be concerned. Even if it is a statistical blip, more than 30 extra people were killed. It reinforces that you cannot be complacent about road safety."

The figures are contained in the DfT's latest quarterly bulletin. Casualties overall fell by four per cent between October 2005 and September 2006 compared with the same period a year earlier.

There was a one per cent drop in those killed or seriously injured. But when the latter group was stripped from the statistics, the number killed rose by 33 - equivalent to a one per cent increase.

Much of the rise was concentrated in the summer months between July and September, when 840 people died on the roads, compared with 818 in the corresponding period in 2005 - up three per cent.

During that time, the number of fatal accidents rose by five per cent, from 745 to 780 crashes.

Road deaths have fallen consistently in recent years, from 4,568 in 1991 to 3,201 in 2005. The exceptions were 2001, when they rose by 41 to 3,450, and 2003, when there was an increase of 77 to 3,508 - largely due to an increase in motorcycle deaths.

The number of speed cameras run by Britain's 38 road safety partnerships has soared to around 6,000 since they were introduced seven years ago.

In 2004 - the latest year for which Home Office figures are available - 2.1million motorists were booked for speeding. Drivers forked out £114.5million in fines last year, with a £60 ticket issued every 15 seconds.

Exact figures for the number of traffic police are not collated nationally and officers are increasingly deployed to other duties when forces are short of manpower.

But the RAC says there was an 11 per cent reduction in traffic officers between 1996 and 2004 and other estimates suggest cuts of up to a fifth in some forces between 1999 and 2004.

The RAC has repeatedly called for more patrols to combat the growing underclass of two million drivers who evade camera fines by driving unregistered and uninsured vehicles.

Campaigner Paul Smith, founder of Safe Speed, said only one in 20 accidents was caused by speeding, and blamed an over-reliance on cameras for the failure to cut fatalities.

"Road deaths should not be rising,' he said, pointing to safer vehicles, the targeting of accident blackspots and better post-crash medical care.

"We have the wrong road safety policy and it's making our drivers worse. Speed cameras and "speed kills" policy is badly affecting driver skills and driver attitudes.

"Drivers are so concerned about getting a speeding ticket that they are less likely to concentrate on the road ahead."

A DfT spokesman said the figures were provisional and warned against premature judgment.

"No single quarter's figures should be taken in isolation, especially if they appear to show a change in trend, as there are random fluctuations," he said.

darbooka

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/12/nspeed12.xml


Speed cameras fail to halt a rise in fatalities on the roads
Last Updated: 2:31am GMT 12/02/2007

The Government's speed camera strategy was dealt a blow yesterday after new figures showed the number of people killed on the country's roads is increasing.

Statistics, covering the 12 months to Sept 30 of last year showed a one per cent rise in fatalities with 3,210 deaths. That compares with 3,177 for the same period in 2005.

"Road deaths should not be rising," said Paul Smith, the founder of the group Safe Speed, which has called for the speed camera strategy to be scrapped. "But speed cameras and 'speed kills' policies are badly affecting driver skills and especially driver attitudes, " he added.

advertisementBut in defending the use of cameras, a Department for Transport spokesman said: "These are one off quarterly provisional statistics.

"These things sometimes go up and sometimes go down. We don't know if they are anything to do with cameras, which still play an essential role in maintaining safety."

darbooka

http://www.politics.co.uk/press-releases/public-services/road/speed-cameras/safe-speed-scrap-speed-cameras-petition-rising-star-$465681.htm

Safe Speed: Scrap Speed Cameras petition is rising star
Monday, 12 Feb 2007 08:24
Since it's launch less than two days ago the Safe Speed official petition to scrap speed cameras has gathered over 2,000 signatures to become a 'rising star' on the Downing Street web site.

It's already ranked 50 out of 2,869 Downing Street petitions, having overtaken over 2,800 other petitions in less than two days. In the 'Transport and Infrastructure' group, amazingly, it is ranked 8 out of 421.

See: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/scrapcam

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(https://www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "Drivers know that speed cameras are the wrong policy and don't make the roads safer. If fact we even know that speed cameras make us into worse drivers. Why the DfT doesn't know this is anyone's guess, but this is our chance to tell them."

"We earned ourselves he safest roads in the world long before we had speed cameras. Since cameras, we're falling back fast. We have to get back to the policies that gave us the safest roads in the world in the first place; policies that value skills and attitudes."

"I urge every driver to sign the petition. We have to force Department for Transport to treat us with respect and value our skills."

tomstickland

Interesing articles there.
I do worry about the way that the system works. However I cannot agree with this:

But it costs the motorist millions of pounds in fines, plus immeasurable inconvenience.

they have all chosen to break a limit and a law.
Now, in another thread on MSE, I've been explaining how the law part is non arguable, but the logic by which limits are set and why people choose to exceed them is an entirely different set of arguments.

darbooka

tomstickland wrote:

they have all chosen to break a limit and a law.
...people choose to exceed ...

Rubbish. Many of the speed penalties were and are issued to people who were not and could not be proven to have exceeded any limit or broken any law. Even if they had committed an offense, you cannot generalise and pre-judge that it was by choice; but that is besides the point. Automated fixed camera speeding penalties are issued to owners / registerred keepers of vehicles regardless of who was the driver, and the same authorities who do not want to take the effort and expense of deploying police officers or other measures to verify the identity of the driver are hoping that those who recieve the penalties and accompanying letters with intimidating phrasiology will pay up quickly REGARDLESS of whether or not they committed the offense.
If they were not driving, and can demonstrate that they genuinely have no record or recollection of who was the driver at the time of the offense, then they cannot be attributed with the offense unless the Police can prove who was the driver. A speeding car is not a legal person. The owner of a speeding car who cannot be proven to have been speeding can not be charged with speeding.

Mr Strickland's statement that

tomstickland wrote:

they have all chosen to break a limit and a law.
...people choose to exceed ...

could also be stated "It's the Police who have chosen to attribute the breaking of a limit and a law, even in cases where they cannot prove the identity of the driver. Police choose to exceed acceptable parameters of proving guilt, because their employers' partners are far more converned with generating revenues than in facilitating prosecutions that lead to sound convictions of speeding offenses.

Now, in another thread on MSE, I've been explaining how the law part is non arguable...

That doesn't mean you are necessarily correct. But in any event, Police enforcement is a component of the law and the means by which Police enforce, administer and correspond with alleged offenders (in cases involving automated fixed speed cameras) is highly dubious, very arguable, often inconsistent, and unsound as my personal experience and that of many others demonstrates.

Gorgeous_George

My concern is that, IF a law has been broken, the driver should be told at the earliest opportune time so that they can avoid breaking the law again.

I was snared at the end of a small slope. Do 30mph at the top of the slope and you could be doing 35mph at the foot of the slope.

The Police rely on people accepting that if the Police say you were speeding then you will pay up. They need to prove it.



GG

tomstickland

darbooka wrote:

Rubbish. Many of the speed penalties were and are issued to people who were not and could not be proven to have exceeded any limit or broken any law. Even if they had committed an offense, you cannot generalise and pre-judge that it was by choice; but that is besides the point.
etc etc

I'd guess that a significant proportion were issued to those who did break the law. All mine certainly were.

It doesn't matter whether a law was broken by choice or accident, it was still an offence.

I wasn't really meaning to lay into driver's who have been caught, but did think that flagging up "inconvenience" was a poor argument. The sort of thing that rabid pro-cameras and limits everywhere supporters pick up on.
Rather like the "if I have to stick to a limit then I'd be watching the speedo all the time" argument. Anargument that's attempting to aid my particular agreements but actually spoils it by being weak.

Mr Strickland's statement

No "R" in my name.

Horasio

We got our first ticket today and I hate the b'stards - so SCRAP the money grabbing sh'ts

darbooka

CCStar, sorry to hear of your experience. Was it from an unmanned automated speed camera? If you don't know who the driver was, are you going to pay anyway or inform them that you do not know and challenge them to prove who the driver was?

darbooka

tomstickland wrote:

It doesn't matter whether a law was broken by choice or accident, it was still an offence.

Firstly, that's not what you said in your post before you edited it in response to my comment. Your wording suggested that everyone recieving a Notice of Intended Prosecution is guilty.
Secondly, Police automated speed camera detection of an offense being committed is not enough to ensure that a particular person is to be found guilty of that offense. In the absence of an admission by the offender, and/or when the vehicle owner doesn't know who was driving even after taking all plausible action to find out, the Police must be able to specifically identify with certainty who the driver was.
If a speeding offense was committed and all the Police can prove is who owned the car, that is not enough. If a Police officer stopped the car and checked the identity of the driver in person, they would be able to prove who the driver is. Scaring people with letters containing statements that don't stand up to challenge, seems to be a more lucrative approach favoured by the Police. That's what makes it all stink.

tomstickland wrote:

No "R" in my name.

For the record, I genuinely did not make the spelling transgression intentionally; but if still consdier it offensive I apologise. Unlike unmanned speed camera administrators, you were able to see my identity when the offensive act occured and point it out to me directly and hold me to account for my oversight. That's why Police should use human beings to chase offenders and rely almost entirely on automated photos of numberplates to deduce who might have been driving the car. And for those who commit speeding offenses as well as insulting name misspellings, the human contact is far more of an effective corrective measure and constructive approach than misleading letters with Police logos can ever be.