[article] UK rethink on speed cameras

mike65

this from the Times (of London)

March of speed cameras halted
By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent


THE relentless advance of speed cameras across Britain is to be halted under government plans to restore confidence in traffic policing, The Times has learnt.

Cameras will no longer be used as revenue-raising devices, and the system of recycling speeding fines to fund increasing numbers of cameras is to be abolished.

Camera partnerships, which include police forces and local authorities, will be ordered to consider every other option for improving safety and will only be allowed to install a camera as a last resort.

Ministers believe that the "cash for cameras" scheme, under which forces keep a proportion of camera fines to pay for more cameras, has resulted in widespread distrust of the speed enforcement system, The Times has been told.

The number of camera fines has increased ten-fold in the past decade, from 200,000 in 1995 to more than two million last year.

The Department for Transport remains convinced that cameras work and will soon publish its annual report on the scheme, showing that cameras save more than 100 lives a year. But the department will also announce reforms to the way inwhich the partnerships are managed and funded.

Revenue from camera fines will be collected centrally and redistributed among the partnership areas for use in all aspects of road safety.

Rather than being restricted to erecting more cameras, the partnerships will be able to use the money to make junctions safer and to improve the visibility of signs and road markings.

No partnership will benefit more than any other from increases in revenue, removing the incentive to focus enforcement where the highest number of drivers can be caught. Motoring groups believe that the partnerships have become self-perpetuating bureaucracies that are more concerned with maintaining financial targets than tackling the least safe roads.

The department wants them to follow the example of Lincolnshire, which has managed to reduce road casualties while issuing fewer tickets.

Whereas most partnerships apply to the department each year to erect more cameras, Lincolnshire has said that it does not need any more devices.

Ministers also approve of the county’s policy of having camera officials working alongside police road safety officers and council highway engineers.

A government source said: "If all partnerships were made to work together in this way they would think much more carefully about the alternatives to cameras.

"We need to have a better deal with motorists to convince them that cameras are not about making money." However, the department is also planning to give partnerships greater flexibility to use cameras where there is a speeding problem but no recent history of crashes. Roads beside schools will be given priority.

Under the existing criteria, fixed cameras can only be installed where there have been at least four crashes involving death or serious injury in the previous three years.

Cameras can be used in areas of "community concern" that have not had the required number of crashes, but only for 15 per cent of the total time they spend enforcing the limit.

The department is planning either to increase that percentage or give police greater freedom to choose how they use the allotted time.

Ministers accept that this will result in a few hundred new camera sites but believe that the removal of existing cameras will mean that the total will remain about 6,000.

There will also be new guidelines on the enforcement of temporary speed limits during roadworks. Partnerships will be encouraged to use digital cameras, which record the average speed between two points.

The department is also preparing to publish independent research refuting claims that the benefits of speed cameras have been exaggerated.

Safe Speed, the anti-camera campaign group, argues that casualty reduction at camera sites is simply the result of the frequency of crashes returning to normal.

However, academics from the University of Liverpool, who previously questioned the benefits of cameras, now accept that they are genuine.

Mike.