End Of The Road For Speed Cameras

By Mark Daniell

27/07/2010

So speed cameras are on the way out and nothing has ruffled left wing feathers more than knowing that within a few months of a Conservative Prime Minister taking office Jeremy Clarkson will have his way. But, as they say, ruffled feathers make for warmer duvets, so let's not lose too much sleep over it. Maybe Clarkson will be knocked down by a speeding motorist and find himself in a vegetative state for the rest of his days. He'd still be able to present Top Gear of course, ho ho. Sorry. That's a bit rough, but speed cameras do that to people. They bring out the extreme. Either they're a greedy, unjustified tax on motorists, or they're essential life savers that Tories don't like because they don't make exception for public school educations. The real question is, why has the government decided to cut funding now?

The figures suggest that speed cameras basically pay for themselves. They generate around £90m a year and cost £110m. Shutting them down will only save £20m, a pittance on a national scale which naysayers say will easily be outweighed by the increase in road accidents and subsequent burden on the NHS. Furthermore, police will have to head out onto roads with handheld devices to keep speeds low, thereby reducing the numbers available for 'real police work'. 

Better still, the more conspiratorial nutjobs believe it's all part of a government ruse. Remove the speed cameras, see accidents rise, introduce new, in-car boxes that monitor speeding from the inside, then, when they're established, use these very same boxes to establish a clever electronic road pricing mechanism and crush personal freedom for good. Ah nutjobs, where would we be without you?

Whatever the reason, the funding is being cut. So where's the gain? Obviously speed cameras are not popular among motorists, they're seen as uncompromising and unreasonable. A car speeding down an empty road at 3 a.m. is no threat to public safety, yet will be punished as if it were racing through a busy town centre. Eliminating them will gain support with some, but it's hardly a political landscape changer. I suspect, as with most things, the truth is far more mundane. 

The fact is, as with all good ideas, speed cameras have boomed too far. At first they were placed at accident blackspots in a genuine attempt to save lives. The success of this, in both reducing accidents and in generating revenue, was such that they were rolled out across the country, since 1992 over five thousand speed and safety cameras have been installed on our roads. The trouble is, there aren't that many blackspots around, so as a primary function the cameras ceased to be accident preventers and instead became revenue generators, carefully placed on busy stretches to maximise returns. (One Dorset camera famously netted £1.3m in one year) The effect was that drivers felt punished, so much so that they became convinced that a 'war on motorists' was being waged. But there's no war on motorists. A war on motorists would involve cyclists with bazookas, and grenades dropped from paragliders into convertible Peugeots, and turncoat electric cars. Motorists just think there's a war on them because motoring is expensive. But motoring has always been expensive. Cars are expensive, petrol is expensive, MOTs are expensive, parking is expensive, services are expensive, new brake pads are expensive, travel sweets are expensive. It's easy to see why the poor motorist who only wants to drive to the shops feels a bit put upon. 

But times have changed, motorists have adapted to modern motoring conditions. They have satnav systems that warn them of approaching speed cameras, they have cruise control to move safely along Average Speed Check stretches without having to stare at the speedometer. Motoring isn't as it was back in the early nineties. Modern dashboard computers have taught us that driving flat out in the fast lane does little more than empty the tank for the sake of a handful of minutes, and that the time taken for most journeys is determined not by top speed but by weight of traffic. Rising petrol prices, environmental awareness and modern computing mean that motorists understand the costs of driving more than ever before. They've outgrown speed cameras and there are now too many out there, most of which neither reduce accidents nor generate surplus income. Naturally, if they're costing £110m a year to fund and the government is undergoing a cost-cutting bonanza, why not reduce their number? 

The stupid thing was to announce the reduction. Most speed cameras are effective in reducing speed and 'saving lives' whether they're operative or not. For Oxfordshire County Council to say they are shutting down all their safety cameras sounds almost like an invitation to speed. The intelligent thing to have done would have been to render the cameras inoperative but to leave them standing. They would have remained a deterrent, cost nothing, and upset far fewer drivers. Maybe some other councils will have a bit more foresight.