Safe Speed Forums

"Ministers argue that festooning our highways with speed cameras makes them even safer. The evidence suggests otherwise."

One area of Government policy that is an unalloyed success, requiring no spin or statistical legerdemain from Downing Street, is the pursuit of motorists who break the speed limit. We report today that the revenue from speed traps has trebled (as has the number of speed cameras) since Labour came to power, and now rakes in £88 million a year, or £167 a minute. That figure will grow. The number of speed cameras continues to increase, while the Government last month announced fresh fixed-penalty opportunities, with plans to lower the speed limit to 20mph in residential areas and to 50mph on single-carriageway trunk roads.

For decades, this country has had some of the safest roads in the world. Ministers argue that festooning our highways with speed cameras makes them even safer. The evidence suggests otherwise. While we have installed more speed cameras than anywhere else in Europe, the decline in road deaths in Britain has actually been less marked than in other, less camera-obsessed countries.

This should come as no surprise: speed cameras, for all the protestations of the Government and police, have always had more to do with revenue generation than with road safety. Official figures show that excessive speed is a factor in just six per cent of accidents. How many cameras are usefully sited near schools and in residential areas – where they really would aid road safety – compared with the number on open roads, where motorists are tempted to drive quickly because it is safe to do so? Very few.

The suspicion that drivers are being hounded with an assiduity that is not brought to the pursuit of burglars, muggers or hooligans has helped diminish respect for the police in the eyes of the law-abiding majority. That is a high price to pay for this money-grubbing policy.

Official figures show that excessive speed is a factor in just six per cent of accidents.[/b]

Any article that extrudes this to assert that speed above the limit is not a factor in 94 percent of accidents has already travelled into the realms of fantasy.

Any article that extrudes this to assert that speed above the limit is not a factor in 94 percent of accidents has already travelled into the realms of fantasy.

is it the standard of your posts that is declining or my tolerance of them?

One way of doing it would be to have an alternate universe, and replay crashes there but have the driver/s enter the arena at the speed limit (instead of the speed limit +X) and see what happens. If the crash was less severe,

or didn't happen at all then you've got to concede the extra speed on top of the limit was a factor.

... then exceeding the speed limit was not a contributory factor towards causing the crash!

If the crash is less severe it is contributory, the faster the car was going the more severe the crash is likely to be.

If the crash is less severe it is contributory, the faster the car was going the more severe the crash is likely to be.

... then exceeding the speed limit was not a contributory factor towards causing the crash!

If the crash is less severe it is contributory, the faster the car was going the more severe the crash is likely to be.