Safe Speed Forums

Today in the motoring section of our daily South Australian paper was the headline SPEED DEMONS. The article went on to inform us that 1.5 million Britons had been prosecuted for speed-camera offences last year, up by 400,000 from the previous year.

The Home Office figures showed that the total number of drivers caught speeding had risen to 1.7 million.
It then went on to say that the revenue collected could not be disclosed but pick a figure with plenty of zero's and you hit the target.

In another article, with the headline A FINE MESS, there is a report of a how a local road that enters our central city as been used to give 12,000 drivers scamera infringements in the last 12 months. This raised $1.8 million in fines for the government.

How was this possible? The speed limit just changed from 60kph (40mph) to 50kph (30kph) and then they put up hard to see signs. The road is six lanes wide, has a wide medium separting the oncoming from each other, very good visibility and has a down hill gradient. It had been 60kph for many years and did not have a bad accident record.

In the report ex-speed camera operators said that they turned the cameras off because they were issueing too many fines and they wanted the area increased back to 60kph.

As I commented in previous postings we have unmaked camera cars over here, they do look like a normally parked commuters car unless you see the SA government registration plates or extra aerial.

The government here has issued $3.7 million in four months from 12 new combined red light- speed cameras, catching 24,000 drivers in a city of one million people. In one area 732 drivers received $100,000 in fines.

The money raised from fines goes to the State Community Road Safety Fund and the cameras were introduced as part of the Governments 2002 Road Safety Reforms Bill which aims to reduce the road toll by 50% by 2018.

Playing the devils advocate, the only way the road toll will reduce by 50% by 2018 is to double the price of petrol, increase the licence age to 25 and prohibit the sale of any car capable of travelling faster than walking speed.

Once again the desire to collect revenue overrides common sense, fairness and the truth.

Further to the above we got informed today that $19.7 million was to be repaid to 90,000 motorists who had received scamera infringements while using the Western Ring Road in Melbourne, Victoria (next state over from South Australia).
Reason given for the faulty cameras was poor installation & maintenance, degradation or sensors and electromagnetic interference.
Go figure that lot out.

Jeremy, out of curiosity how much of Australia's road policy is driven by the federal government and how much from state/territorial goverments? I just wondered because when I've been in WA it seemed to be pretty much a speedtrap free zone. Ah, can't tell you how much I miss those long empty roads since I got back, shame the hire car was so gutless . But NSW and Victoria it seemed to be more like here, cameras, speedtraps, etc.

_________________
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

The local governments seem to set most of the traffic laws in each state hence the great variances in enforcement strategy.
The Northern territory has no speed limits so you CAN travel at 250kph if so inclined. You will however get done for danagerous or reckless driving if you are stupid. However the NT has the lowest road toll of all the states.

Strange that no one really makes an isssue or connection between the two. Unlimited speed does not equal more death.

Here is SA the local government tells the police to go out and patrol the 'black spots' or some road where there was recently a fatal accident. The Port Agusta highway patrol staff cover an area of 177,000 square kilometres. This is an area big enough to cover a very large part of Europe. Must be like driving from London to Venice for a days work. They used to go out of town for a week or so but now they have been told to do no more than 200km in a day so they do not go far from the station however they are still expected to enforce speed limits on roads where a car may pass them every few hours. The result is totally ineffective use of resources.
The SA, NSW, VIC and QLD governments have laws that make issueing ticketsaround the cities as easy as shooting fish in a barrel but as usual it does not help road safety at all.

The northern territory has the highest death rate per 100,000 of population though. It's around 2-3 times higher than other territories. There aren't figures for per million vehicle km which of course could make it a different story.

http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf ... enDocument

I'll wager that it does (make it a different story). Figures per million vehicle km are the only ones worth anything, really.