Safe Speed Forums

In this morning's telegraph:

A review of all 5,500 speed camera locations was ordered by the Government yesterday only five months after a previous inquiry.

Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, told the local authority-police partnerships which run camera schemes that they must reassess the sites to see whether the equipment was still justified.


The RAC has welcomed the camera review

The action, seen by motoring groups as a pre-election "sweetener", reflects dissatisfaction with the initial exercise, which was based on partnerships' own evaluations of whether they had complied with regulations. The review suggested that accident rates had remained constant or increased at about a quarter of sites following the cameras' introduction.

Mr Darling said partnerships must now ascertain in particular whether cameras needed to be retained on roads where good safety records had been achieved, and also where installation appeared to have had no effect on reducing crashes.

He also insisted that the reviews – which he wanted to become annual events – include the 250 "legacy" sites, where police-funded cameras existed before the self-financing partnership schemes came in.

The revised rules make clear that partnerships will be required to carry out "statistically robust" speed surveys before any new cameras can be installed.

They will not be permitted unless studies conducted over a minimum of three days show that at least 20 per cent of vehicles are speeding, and 15 per cent exceeding the limit by 10 per cent plus 2mph.

A further test must also be undertaken to ascertain that no cost-effective engineering alternative, such as chicanes or changes to road markings, could be implemented.

The accident criteria are unchanged. For fixed-camera sites there must have been at least four collisions involving serious injury or death per kilometre covered by the camera during the past 36 months. For mobile equipment, the test is two collisions.

The rules reaffirm that police can locate cameras at any location, provided they do not seek to recover the cost from Whitehall under the partnership scheme.

A 60-page handbook sets out what partnerships can reclaim from the £80 million a year generated by camera fines. As well as staff and equipment, such costs can include spending on publicity and "driver education" campaigns as well as attendance at relevant conferences.

The RAC Foundation welcomed the move. Edmund King, its executive director, said: "At specific sites, cameras have been very effective. But across the board serious accidents have increased and the policy as a whole is not really working.

"Too often these partnerships do not even consider engineering solutions to safety problems, and turn to cameras just because they can reclaim the cost."

They still haven't realised that places where people are speeding are usually safe to speed. It should be cameras on narrow roads where hardly anyone speeds but where the reckless might. These are the people they should be targetting.

I noticed it is still the scamera people doing the assessment so shouldn't someone independent overlook all the data? Perhaps even better all the data from all the sites should be published in its raw state so people can judge for themselves.

It doesn't cost much to raise the speed limit!

It may just be the cynic in me but I suspect they may have been told to find some to take down to make the government look good.

I'm sure if the pratnerships are given the right motivation they can find figures to show some of their cameras can be removed.