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WAR ON SPEED CAMS 'PUTTING KIDS AT RISK'

10:40 - 06 June 2006
A militant motorists' group has come under fire for destroying speed cameras near two schools.

Motorists Against Detection (MAD) previously claimed that it only targeted cameras on "fast" roads. The group, which says the cameras are simply a stealth tax on motorists, has stepped up its campaign in the area, but has been accused of endangering children in the process.

Its leader, known only as Captain Gatso, admitted MAD was targeting cameras on the A303 and the A370 and had burnt two cameras near local schools in the last few days.

And he said the group was now adopting a "zero tolerance" approach to all speed cameras.

One of the cameras is at Hewish on the A370, near St Anne's CE Primary School.

St Anne's head teacher Judith Hook said the destruction of the camera at Hewish could endanger children and parents.

She said: "You have to turn sharply from the A370 into the car park at the school and the camera was a deterrent to speeding.

"Once people realise it has been burned down, there will be a greater risk of accidents.

"It is very sad to see vandalism of this nature so near a school."

Dick Bowen, the project manager for the Avon and Somerset Safety Camera Partnership, which operates the cameras, condemned the actions of the group. He said: "Captain Gatso, whoever he is, has said they are in favour of cameras outside schools and in urban areas.

"There is a school just down the road from the camera at Hewish and a camera outside a school in New Bristol Road was also set on fire.

"Most motorists know where the cameras are on the A370. Now those that have been destroyed will be removed and we will be doing mobile enforcement and motorists won't know where they are until it's too late."

MAD has said it will target cameras on the A303 and on the A370, a main route between Bristol and Weston-super-Mare.

One roadside camera at Hewish on the A370 was attacked two nights in a row last week. It was the latest in a series of arson attacks on speed cameras on the A370 since the beginning of the year and MAD has pledged more will follow.

The shadowy operations director of the national group, the so-called Captain Gatso, said he had come to the West Country to launch the campaign.

Gatso, who is thought to be a London businessman, said: "We are all normal people but we are no longer willing to play by the rules because of the proliferation of camera enforcement technology and the relentless war on the motorist by the Government."

Gatso drives a BMW and has a high-powered motorbike but says he has never been caught by a camera himself. He said he regularly changed vehicles and did not register them using his home address. He said some drivers even altered their number plates to avoid detection - which is illegal.

Gatso also claimed the Avon and Somerset Safety Camera Partnership had not reduced road casualties in total since its inception.

MAD previously said it supported cameras at traffic lights and in urban areas, particularly in main streets and outside schools, but not on "fast-moving A-roads, dual carriageways and motorways".

Avon and Somerset police spokeswoman Ceri Doyle said: "We are aware of the speed camera torching on the A370 and we are looking into it."

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Safe Speed issued the following PR at 11:55 this morning:

PR317: No cameras near schools

news: for immediate release

The Bristol Evening Post reports that the "WAR ON SPEED CAMS 'PUTTING KIDS AT
RISK'" It is referring to speed camera vandalism near schools carried out by
militant group 'Motorists Against Detection'. Safe Speed certainly does not
condone camera vandalism, but demands that speed cameras are urgently scrapped
to be replaced with sound road safety policies.

Safe Speed's research strongly suggests that speed cameras have failed to make
our roads safer. Instead they have replaced worthwhile road safety beliefs and
policies and indirectly made our roads considerably more dangerous.

This is true at camera sites as well as elsewhere. Cameras take precious
driver attention away from the road ahead and squander it on the camera, the
speed limit and the speedometer.

Safe Speed has previously issued a warning to pedestrians not to cross the road
near speed cameras because drivers will be paying less attention. This follows
exclusive straw poll research that indicates extraordinary amounts of driver
attention diverted from the road near cameras.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "The assumption that speed cameras make our roads
safer in any general way is quite quite wrong. Real road safety depends on
human factors - skills, attitudes and responsibilities. Far from improving road
safety, speed camera erode the very qualities on which road safety depends."

"Far from saving lives, speed cameras are a deadly mistake and have caused road
death reduction to stall."

"All our speed cameras are in the wrong places. They should in the scrap yard."

"The last place in the world that I would place a speed camera is outside a
school. We need drivers paying attention to kids, not cameras."

<ends>

Notes for editors
=================

Bristol Evening Post article:
http://www.thisisbristol.com/displayNod ... ode=200267
&home=yes&more_nodeId1=144916&contentPK=14599162

Safe Speed PR: "Don't cross near cameras":
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/pr142.html

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Safe Speed issued the following PR at 11:55 this morning:

PR317: No cameras near schools

news: for immediate release

"All our speed cameras are in the wrong places. They should in the scrap yard."

"The last place in the world that I would place a speed camera is outside a
school. We need drivers paying attention to kids, not cameras."

<ends>


i thought this site was about road safety and not just anti -camera, IMO there is no better place to set up at when the kids are going to / from school, as for crossing the road theres a thing called the lollipop person or even a pelican / zebra crossing

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now retired

But the problem, camera operater, is that at the moment drivers enter a supposedly hazardous area, they see the camera warning signs/camera and the only real thing enters their minds is to make sure that that needle on your dashboard isn't pointing above one specific number. Even if drivers are doing well below the speed limit, it will still be human nature to check your speedometer to double check that you really won't get 3 points. And that is not good for safety. I have in fact myself seen scary near misses near cameras which were very likely caused by the camera(s).

The issue at schools or places like that is observation and anticipation, not what numerical speed people are doing.

maybe that why we are constanly asked to attend school sites at the beginning / end of day

its not a lot to ask is it to slow down for that stretch of road

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now retired

then stick a couple of coppers at the end of the road and get them to pull over anyone who actually manages to drive through all the double parked 4wds at anything more than 5mph.

It seems that Dick is resigned to the fact that despite the presence of cameras, motorists WILL speed.
YOU know that Cam. Op., because YOU catch them on film, yet you allow them to carry on - perhaps to drive past the schools where it is claimed they present a risk to children.
Aren't you risking being accused of NOT preventing a crime you know WILL be committed, and WITNESS being committed, but as long as your employers get £60 a few days later, you allow it to continue?

There WILL come a day when somebody is run down by a driver, who has past a camera, and not been stopped! There is NOTHING safe about a camera!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

The problem is that the fixation on a secondary road safety factor (speed) to the exclusion of the primary factors (COAST) is highly detrimental to road safety. The majority of accidents occur at speeds within the posted limit - so cameras would not have prevented those. However, cameras could well have contributed to those accidents directly or indirectly.

Speed camera policy is sending the wrong message and you and your ilk are telling the public, "Your primary responsibility to road safety is to obey the speed limit; obey the speed limit and you will be a safe and good driver!" What's wrong with that message? -- it's fallacious that obeying the speed limit will keep you safe Try doing 30mph into the back of a bus to see what I mean. If you drive with COAST, you will automatically travel at a safe and appropriate speed for the conditions. We need people to think about their driving, not bimble along like robots with their heads in the dash. Unfortunately, replacing proper traffic police with camera units has encouraged (and continues to encourage) the latter.

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Will

a straw poll

(:60:) leading to a 200metre buffer zone, then after about 250m another 200m to the target zone 150m to myself, (between the and myself there were 3 side junctions and a pelican crossing

i was parked outside a school at the end of the yellow zigzag lines offering full visibilty to the back of my van ( enforcement end) the front of my van was coned off to around 10 / 15 metres offering a visibility to oncoming traffic of at least the 60m requirement (more like 80m)

from the data summary log sheet

results at scene 08.15 - 09.45 total logs 44

7 distance checks (every 15 mins)
under 29 mph 5 vehicles
30 -33 mph 12 vehicles
33 - 37 mph 17vehicles
38mph + 3 vehicles

top speed 44mph,

total vehicles passing the van 500 +, more like 1000

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now retired

Camera Operator,

i'm interested to know at what distance you are recording vehicles speed from, is it very close to your van or 100s of feet away?

From Cam Op's description, 150m.



So, there's a 200m long 40mph zone before the 30mph limited area starts. 350m into the 30mph zone there's a camera warning sign; a further 200m to the area being targeted which is 150m from the talivan.

_________________
Less Kodak, more Kojak.
In times of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

I'm not sure how to interpret your data, but it seems to me as though everyone's driving to the numbers rather than choosing a safe speed. I'd be interested to know what the speeds were when the pavement was full of children and when it was not because (assuming a normal, unbarriered pavement) I would expect the speeds to be lower for the former if people were matching their speed to the conditions, and to be roughly the same if they were not.

_________________
Will

It sounds to me like at the target zone, although a 30, it is actually safe to do mid to high 30's.

I'd be interested to know what speed the same people were doing where you were, ie directly outside the school. (both when you were and were not there)

_________________
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

There are certain areas near me where the NSL is the limit past schools, and this can be an appropriate speed in some situations and in a few select circumstances.

I am always quite sceptical of artificially low speed limits at these locations, the tallivans I have witnessed appear to point their crosshairs at vehicles several hundred metres away from the school at vehicles on the approaching staight (that of course, up until a few years ago used to be NSL) often way past shool finishhing time.

Big or small van? Camera looking out through drop windows in doors, through open rear doors, or on a tripod outside the van? How much of the van livery is visible from the rear when you're in operating mode? How many other vehicles parked nearby? Is it even remotely conceivable that, without close study, the back of your van might be mistaken for <insert any one of at least a dozen other varieties of hi-viz liveried vans on the roads these days>?

One of the Thames Valley vans I see regularly around here looks, from the front or rear, more like a council van than anything else - VERY subtle (and small) SCP graphics and amber light bar... Even walking past it you have to look closely to see some of the markings (like the POLICE lettering above the rear windows - must be all of, ooh, about 2 inches tall, so that'll be nice and visible from 150m won't it )

Not implying your particular vehicle is as poorly marked up as this one, but in general it's a bit risky to assume that just because a van is parked in what seems like a high-visibility spot, it actually IS highly visible...




Hmm, why is the second grouping 30-33 rather than 31-33? If someone is pinged doing dead on the legal limit, you'd count them in this group of vehicles which appear to be exceeding the limit, which then makes the site look as if it's got more of a speeding problem than may actually be the case. Seems a touch dodgy if you ask me.

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Chris

and more to the point, in the pre-scam days most people would glance at it and then ignore it as it's not a hazard. Now scam-man is expecting people to divert their attention away from the school children and instead spend several seconds trying to identify exactly what sort of van is parked by the side the road. Thanks cam op, you're doing wonders for road safety.

Ok, I understand tallivans have to be visible from X metres or so but any old van is visible from x metres, inc BT vans and also many plumming vans.

Surely regulations should dictate it must be identifiable as a speed camera, not just merely visible.....after all if its not identifiable then it becomes an enforcement vehicle rather than a deterrent vehicle.

intresting response

i did not post this thread to illustrate if the speed was safe or not, just factual data to illustrate that at a decent distance into a 30 mph limit the summary log shows that drivers are still over the limit outside a school

despite the no school sign emoticons

being totaly cynical if we replace the cats eyes with strobe lighting pointing at a fully liveried transit van that might quell the non visibility issue

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now retired

If you're parked right next to the entrance but you're targetting vehicles at up to 150m away, then the speeds you're recording don't really show anything about what the speeds are like as the vehicles pass right by the school itself. As willcove and gopher have already hinted at, it'd be very interesting if there was data showing the change in speeds as the vehicles progress through the entire 30 limit, cross-referenced to all the hazards along that stretch of the road. That 44mph driver - did they continue at that speed right past a mass of kids spilling out into the road from the pavement, or did they slow down as they got closer to the hazards (but out of sight of your laser)? Or - given that the extract from your log covers 90 minutes, which is quite a bit longer than the usual morning school rush - were they doing 44 at a time when there weren't actually any kids around?

And let's put this into context. You reckon that between 500-1000 vehicles went by during your 90 minute stint, of which only 20 were recorded as being definitely over the limit (I'm still concerned about the way that 30-33 grouping makes it impossible to know exactly how many drivers were at/below the limit). Doesn't that suggest the vast majority of drivers actually are behaving themselves in the vicinity of this school?

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Chris

I think you can understand why people are slightly sceptical of tallivan enforcement?

I think whether the speed was safe or not is highly relevent as camera enforcement is meant to occur in places where speed is not safe?

Correct me if i'm wrong, but did the road used to have a higher speed limit such as NSL?......

But doesn't this highlight the essential futility of this type of enforcement?

Assuming (a) that the speeds were recorded directly outside the school rather than aproaching or departing the area and (b) that during this time there were actually kids about, it's probably not safe at much over 20mph, yet you are recording speeds of more than twice that without being able to do anything about it!. OK, a few of them will get a NIP in a couple of weeks, but that's no bloody use! They need stopping, bollocking and nicking, there and then.

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev