No need for speed (cameras)
Posted on August 8, 2010The Coalition Government would want history to remember them for all sorts of things – for laying waste to the database State, for tackling the budget deficit, maybe even for building the Big Society.
But could, as Roger Helmer suggests, the scrapping of speed cameras actually become their most memorable legacy?
The impact of an aggressive policy of cameras and automated fines should not be underestimated. It has cost millions of motorists a huge amount of money. It has made many more worryingly resentful as they see the forces of law and order used to raise cash, not deliver justice. As the TPA’s recent report shows, just about the only thing it hasn’t done is hasten the improvement in safety on our roads.
Now that the Government has stopped pushing, and funding, that policy it is down to local councils to choose whether to keep the cameras snapping and the fines flying through the post. Isn’t it strange that as soon as the decision is made by people who are locally accountable to voters, rather than apparatchiks in Whitehall, speed cameras suddenly start being turned off?
Already the draconian speed lobby are swinging into action, with a remarkably revealing story on the BBC News website from Oxfordshire. It’s the usual scare stuff, blaring out that speeding had increased by 88% since the switch-off – although the research is based on studying a tiny sample of roads for a handful of days.
The real flaw in the piece is that reducing speed seems to have become an end in itself for the supporters of cameras; there is no discussion of whether those roads have actually become any more dangerous, or whether any more people have actually been injured. That blinkered obsession is exactly why speed cameras were a failure – and why they will not be missed.
Tags: Local Government, Localism, Motorists, Oxfordshire, Politics, public spending, Speed cameras, TaxPayers' Alliance
Categories: Local Government, Politics, Public spending
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mark Wallace and Shirley Summers, Jamie Vaide. Jamie Vaide said: RT @wallaceme: Crash Bang Wallace: The real speed freaks are the supporters of speed cameras http://bit.ly/bpbFaS [...]
13.08.2010 15:37
That’s an interesting paper from the TPA. Just doing a little eyeball estimate on the projected casualty rate it appears that it would have fallen to zero around 2013. That means one of two things: either the act of driving in 2014 would have healed the sick, or the projection has questionable value. It appears clear to me that it’s the latter, i.e. the rate of reduction in the number of casualties would, at best, have slowed down as it approached zero. Now it’s still interesting that there’s an apparent inflection point at the time speed cameras were introduced, but I don’t think the TPA’s report adequately demonstrates what it claims.
13.08.2010 16:15
What’s always missing from these discussions is any balancing of costs against benefits.
In the end, are any extra deaths a good trade-off against the extra benefits?
Unless you can frame the question in these terms you aren’t going to answer it.
16.08.2010 21:04