A step in the right direction
Sunday, July 25, 2010 There's a story in today's Sunday Times that is so uplifting, if true, that I can hardly believe it.
"Thousands of speed cameras," we are led to believe, "are about to disappear across England and Wales ... The first county likely to abandon the devises is Oxfordshire, which could switch off its 79 fixed cameras as early as next weekend. Other counties are preparing to follow suit."
I have written about speed cameras and how their ubiquity really does diminish the quality of my life, especially those confounded average speed cameras that are popping up with increasing frequency.
I accept, as the RAC man says in today's report, that they have a role to play in some accident black spots, but under the previous government the situation was getting out of hand (although I appreciate that these decisions are usually made at local level).
Last week I was speaking to a friend who was driving along the M40 at the time and all I could hear in the background was a series of high pitched bleeps as his sat nav alerted him to the fact that he was approaching yet another speed camera.
Someone commented on another thread that it really does feel as if we're living under a more liberal regime, and what a marvellous feeling that would be.
I say "would" because actions speak louder than words and Nick Clegg's refusal to even countenance an amendment to the smoking ban means that people like me remain sceptical of this Government's intentions.
Nevertheless, if this story is true (the devil is in the detail), then it's a step in the right direction and I'll be the first to say "Bravo!".
Below: we used this image in Forest's Fight The Ban: Fight For Choice campaign which was launched in May 2004. The headline was: 'Smokers - your local could be next'.
Not many people understood it. The point we were trying to make, prior to the smoking ban, was that smoking in a pub could soon be like driving - highly regulated with no shortage of prying eyes (the smoke police) trying to catch you out.
Well, I liked it.
Simon Clark
Iain Dale has this to say: Ending the war on the motorist
Reader Comments (8)
I wouldnt get too carried away about the disappearance of speed cameras, I've heard that half of them were never working in the first place.
Maybe the govt figure they're surpurfluous to requirements now that they have our seed, breed and generation, of us easy targets on computer in this Big Brother age.
Or maybe they can just monitor us through our sat nav systems at no cost at all?
The problem is, as I see it, that it is local councils that govern the implementation of speed cameras, and with the Government cutting council's budgets, they will obviously now start screaming "where are we going to get our money from now then?"
This screaming of course will all be behind the closed doors of the Council meetings, the screaming that we, the gerneral public will hear, is how cruel the Government is to slash council budgets, which will mean cutting the police on the street, and of those we must never forget, i.e "the kiddies".
Want to make us feel bad? Want to show the Government up? Want to show haw absolutely marvellous the last Government was? Then let's say that "we" the ever smoking, ever driving, ever Tory, general public, are harming the "kiddies"
And it does work you know!
It just shows that things that many people said were "here to stay" and that we would have to "learn to live with" are not necessarily here for ever. Yes, they are going because of lack of money, but surely at least part of the reason is that local authorities have recognised their ineffectiveness and therefore don't think they're worth spending their limited resources on.
The late Paul Smith of the Safe Speed campaign recognised them for what they are - a counter-productive quack remedy - and was widely dismissed as a crank. But he'll be having the last laugh now.
The speed camera employees union are obviously horrified at the prospect of their flea like sharp beaks no longer being given carte blache to feed they are shrieking.
My advice ?
Get a real job !
Oh goody goody an outbreak of freedom for the motorist,lets forget the
health and safety issues ,but hold on a minute ,where does that leave the three
boarded up pubs in my ghetto. Are the freedom dispensers still cringing in fear
of their unseeen corporate masters,their overseas controllers,the well funded
policy setters.
Plenty of slogans for liberty but still puppets on the same strings,
same Soviet Hymns on a new Blue and Yellow Organ.
Wait for the ricochet
1000s of hours/r 10 years studying cameras etc. initially re my ECHR right to silence application (google my name and ECHR)
We have been systematically lied to for 14 years, 10,000 more have died in camera era than would have been expected - falling trend/veh km fell from 7% pa to 3% pa.
www.safespeed.org.uk/vas.html documents how DfTranscom lied that cameras are 12% (!!) more cost effective than vehicle activated signs, when in reality they are 50 TIMES LESS cost effective. A £1k pa sign is as effective as a £50k pa camera. I forced Ladyman to admit in writing to 9 times, but even that was based on costs only in 1st year, ignoring massive costs of enforcement system, jobsworths, police and court time etc - and of course victim costs.
Brake, Pacts and others, wailing and gnashing their teeth, get much of their funding from speed camera companies.
14% of fatal accidents involve speed above limit - or MIGHT have done (STATS 20 instrucitions. Cameras cut speeding by typically 50%, but even 100% fatalities would not fall by even 14% at sites, because many other causal factors remain.
Sites cover 1% oir roads in urban areas, 3% in rural - so even if cameras DID cut 14% at sites, that would not be even 0.5% natioinally - at a cost of £150m a year.
How many lives would a hospital save given an extra £150m a year?
In 2006 the DfT, knowing perfectly well that cameras were useless but not wanting to admit it, off-loaded decisions to local authorities, its called "passing the buck".
Local auithorities, by and large have little specialist knowledge other than DfT and other propaganda - so it has taken the economic crisis for them to look more closely at bangs per buck - or in this case, fewer bangs per buck,
I have provided a great deal of information to Transcom and MPs on these issues, and like to think I have had some effect. But not yet enough.
Sorry, to those who think that "they have a place" or are "1 tool in the box" - no carpenter would keep a £100 chisel that cuts him when a £2 chisel works better and does not.
Worse, there are nearly 40 adverse effects. most of which apply on most roads not 3% of roads, and cause more accidents than cameras ever prevent - drivers concentrating on the roadside not the road, or speedometer not the pedestrian stepping off the kerb.
The Highways Agency 2008 report on average speed cameras was unable to find ANY evicence of benefit, but plenty of evidence of adverse effects - tailgating, sudden braking, bunching etc. Tjheir solution? Train drivers to avoid these adverse effects!!!!!!!!
Portsmouth City Council have NO BASIS whatever for claiming success for their "signs only" 20mph area, installed in defiance of DfT advice. Results adjusted for lower traffic (natch) are worse or much worse than national trends, but the bozos responsible cherry pick numbers and ignore traffic volume and steep national falls to pretend otherwise.
I would be happy to correspond with anyone on these issues, especially anyone who knows a way fo getting this information to all local authorities - the head of the
Road Safety Officers' Assn refused to do so, being a "believer" in camera nonsense
Incidentally, I analysed 4.2m injiury accidents 1991 - 2007. In 131,303 examples of 1km sq areas where KSI reached 4 in 3 years, the average fall, in the vast majority of cases without a camera in sight, was of the order of 40% - much the same as is claimed for camera benefit - entirely due to other natiural reasons
Idris Francis
Great post, Idris .
Just one thing re:
"We have been systematically lied to for 14 years................................"
Far, far longer than that - and not just about speed cameras, I fear !
Brilliant post Idris.
Another issue that needs addressing on the roads is the fact that on single carriageway A roads there are 3 different speed limits on each NSL stretch!
60mph for cars, m/bikes, etc; 50mph for commercial vehicles such as vans & 7.5 ton trucks and 40mph for anything over 7.5tons.
This is inherently dangerous, particularly because the majority of non commercial drivers are not aware of these differences and these reduced speeds cause rolling road blocks that see some drivers taking ridiculous risks and endangering many other road users.
HGV's are restricted to 85 or 90 kmh (around 56mph) anyway and it would be much more acceptable for them to be permitted drive at 50mph on NSL roads, where the roads are suitable; by that I mean that some rural roads that are classed as NSL are not even suitable for cars drive at 50+mph, never mind anything bigger.
I saw an accident on the A40 in Gloucestershire yesterday where a car had smashed into the rear of an HGV rigid truck. It did make me wonder if perhaps the driver of the truck had slowed down for a speed camera - to 40mph and if this had been the cause of the accident! If not then, then I am sure at some time or another it has been or most certainly will be.