A lot has been said about the use of speed cameras as a form of just raising a new tax on generally law abiding and safe motorists who are low insurance risks and have not killed anyone on the road. Here's a working example of how it all works.
I live in a place called Abbots Langley in Hertfordshire. Near my home are two wide roads, one which leads from my village to Hemel Hempstead (the Bedmond Road to locals) via two villages called Bedmond and Pimlico, the other runs roughly in parallel from St Albans to Hemel (the Hemel road to locals). Once in the country stretches on each road, the national speed limit is applied but there are also clearly marked speed limits as you enter the built up areas. On the Hemel road, at a dangerous turning to get to the Bedmond Road, there are two speed cameras in each direction, less than a half mile apart from each other. They try to slow traffic down for the turning. These are good cameras and sensibly placed. They are near the village of Leverstock Green and a small set of reconstructed barns, so electricity and other amenities are close at hand for the cameras to work.
Further down the Hemel Road toward St Albans there is a long stretch with a big set of shallow curves which make the road fast but actually very dangerous for overtaking. Here, 'boy racers' love to gun their cars and overtake at speed. There have no less than 4 deaths by accidents on this stretch in the last 3 years, one very recently where there is a carpet of flowers laid out like a graveyard for the unfortunate young person who died there. There are other flowers further along for another recent death by accident - it is that dangerous around there.
Yet there are no cameras on this section of road. Mainly because there is no street lighting or houses near by. So electricity would have to be piped to the spots required for cameras to be effective, if they indeed are. That would cost too much money as the camera needs to 'pay its way'. No camera is erected unless it at least pays for itself but, far better, it makes a blinding profit.
Similarly on the Bedmond Road, there is the corresponding turning from the connecting road to the Hemel Road, along which cars race at high speeds even though this is not a T junction, but a staggered crossroads. Just a little further along from the Hemel side, near the entrance to the village of Pimlico, there is a bend where the streetlights begin and a tree at its apex. On the tree are teddy bears nailed, with flowers and messages even though the young person who died there did so over two years ago. There was another accident there no so long ago.
Racers, not content with the crossroads danger, speed into this bend, after which comes the 40 mph zone and they are almost blind to the dangers of oncoming traffic and the bend. In this case, we are on the outer, almost disputed limit of Three Rivers and Dacorum Councils, whose responsibilities it is to make this road safe. And because it is in 'no man's' land, then no one pays for a camera to be erected, and no one wants to do the calculation of whether enough cars go past to pay its way or make its profit.
That is the way road safety is thought of. Each camera must pay its way or make profit. If it can't, then road safety is not the priority. The priority is money making. It's why more cameras are in built up areas measuring people going over 30 mph than others as it is more likely to happen and easier to erect the cameras for less cost.
I would like to think I am wrong about this but the cameras put up on the built up end of the Bedmond Road in my Village of Abbots Langley are in the 30 mph zone, justified on the death of a dog. They are on a hill, less than a quarter of a mile apart. Now, I agree these cameras are well placed on that piece of road but I can't help feeling that the cost justification calculation was far easier given no actual road deaths had occurred there whereas less than a mile or so away toward Hemel on two other roads, several deaths had occurred recently.
We must not get duped about this whole road safety argument. We need more sensible driving, to be sure. We want less road deaths, be sure of that also. But speed cameras are not the answer in their current deployment criteria and until we get that out of our heads, we will not get past this argument between sensible drivers, who do not cause deaths but are easy targets for cash, and the pious people who think the cameras are the only way to balance their books.
In the last 10 years, over £1bn has been raised on speeding fines from cameras and the rate of new fines is £250k per day. Not a penny of that has been spent to prevent the deaths on two roads near me which have multiple deaths recorded in the recent past.
Economics drives road safety in this country, not common sense. Only when we break the equation between profit and the cost of life will we get progress.
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