SpeedSpike

Interesting article (if it is all to be believed):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/road-safety/2749419/Speed-cameras-the-twisted-truth.html

In 1991 the government launched its first £1 million TV ad campaign centred on the dangers of speeding (“Kill your speed, not a child”). In 1992 the police were given a new weapon when the first speed cameras were installed in west London.

By September 1994 government spending on TV ads was running at £2.7 million a year, now centred on the slogan that was to become familiar: “Speed kills”. In 1997 the yearly advertising budget reached £3.5 million. Cameras were now proliferating the length and breadth of the land. Police patrols, except on motorways, were being reduced. In 1999, as income from penalties for offences recorded by cameras soared towards £100 million a year…

The government…..would now take action, with a strategy that “will focus especially on speed”. A DfT strategy paper claimed speed was “a major contributory factor in about a third of all road accidents”. The “excessive and inappropriate speed” that helped “to kill about 1,200 people” each year was “far more than any other single contributor to casualties on our roads”.

The source given for this claim, to be repeated as a mantra by ministers and officials for years to come, was a report from the government’s Transport Research Laboratory, TRL Report 323: “A new system for recording contributory factors in road accidents”.

Not many people would have looked at this report, since it was only available for £45. But some who did were amazed. The evidence the report had cited to support its claim that speed was “a major contributory factor in about a third of all road accidents” simply wasn’t there. Many other factors were named as contributing to road accidents, from driving without due care and attention to the influence of drink; from poor overtaking to nodding off at the wheel. But the figure given for accidents in which the main causative factor was “excessive speed” was way down the list, at only 7.3 per cent.

But the current ‘courses’ are classroom based and don’t put an instructor in the seat next to the offender where he can assess the driving standard and mandate corrective training.

Moggy

Which really underlines the question about their usefulness and Blue’s conclusion thereof.

But the current ‘courses’ are classroom based and don’t put an instructor in the seat next to the offender where he can assess the driving standard and mandate corrective training.

Moggy

I would say it’s just a nice easy win-win solution for both the offender and the authorities. The offender avoids points, and the authorities still get their wonga but can claim honestly, hand on heart, that they are indeed using speed cameras to improve safety.

I couldn’t agree more with your last sentence, and it echoes my sentiments about the relationship between speed and accidents. But the question is do the courses like the one you were “obliged” to attend actually change habits in the majority of drivers? Or are they just a way for the majority to avoid additional points?

I cannot see that much will change without far more traffic police to enforce better driving and perhaps retesting, or a more rigorous first test.

60 quid of that was mine, moggy!

I have led a blameless life lately apart from a £60 levied by a speed camera placed on the downhill stretch of Grapes Hill in Norwich where gravity assists in boosting the take.

Looking back over some 45 years driving there were at least three £30 ones and a £180 + 28 days pedestrianisation.

Mind you, Mrs Moggy is booked in for her day of ‘speed awareness’ on the 12th May :rolleyes:

I have one major objection to Speedspike.

As most of us who spend any time on the road do I use a satnav with regularly updated tax camera warnings. Where these are placed at accident spots it means I am alerted to the fact and can take extra care. This must be a good thing.

If speed monitoring becomes universal as this development promises that extra alerting becomes ineffective.

Final point.

The fines system is wrong. The triggering of a camera should get the culprit headed for an hour of in-car driver training / monitoring at his own expense. The instructor having the option of mandating further training before the offence is cleared.

Better driver training will cut far more road accidents than nanny tax cameras.

Moggy

If the £74M is correct, the Local NHS get 1/3rd, stuff like Air ambulance/copper chopper gets 1/3rd and the Police the last 1/3rd. Nearly £25m each per year. Most areas divvy up the bounty in this way.

As for my term in the OP. It is common parlance to use such a term when one is being ripped off or conned out of hard earned cash. The original meaning, as per my schooling, is “To sieze”.
So, in context it is just an expression. If you or a close one has just been raped, it is in bad taste and to you I apologise.

Ah! you’ve got me there, GA.;) Bring on the birch………..:diablo:

………..keep up the good work you naughty bunch of anarchists!:diablo:

And if they did that to your gateposts, you’d be blaming Gordon Brown and demanding the instant return of the birch….. :p

60 quid of that was mine, moggy!

6 emps over the limit, facing open countryside at 08:00 on a clear, dry, Saturday morning – not trying to overtake either!

Paid the man – went on the ‘driver awareness course’ in lieu of the 3-points.
Never been done before, but guilty in the inflexible eyes of the device (never saw it, honest guv!).
(Insert appropriate non-smilie here)

I think you are drifting rather wide of the mark. Let’s take 50% tax on higher income earners and not mess around with the income at the lower rates or even deductable expenses, so, based on Moggy’s figures, you would be looking celebrity incomes of £148 million.

A few US movie stars might make 20 million a movie but in the UK who do you think will be earning anything like that sort of money. A large percentage of Cowell’s income is derived in the US anyway.

Now if you were talking about footballers you might be nearer the mark………..;)

the cowell thing was certainly the case about 5 years ago i dare say the number of cameras has gone up now.

but you get my drift, a few high paid celebs would easily cover the speed camera fines

I do recall, with great plesure and amusement, photos a year or two ago of headless camera posts, videos of exploding cameras and cameras with lens covers………..keep up the good work you naughty bunch of anarchists!:diablo:

A lot of cameras were also being destroyed ‘by the people’ fed up with big brother. If you pi88 off the population enough, none of these new cameras will last long. (not that I would condone such an action of course:rolleyes:)

theyre not money making machine BTW.

Motorists have been hit with speeding tickets worth almost £1billion under Labour.

But receipts have fallen since police were stopped from keeping part of the money raised from speed cameras.

It suggested that the explosion in the number of cameras was used as a ‘cash cow’ and that forces no longer have an incentive to install them.

Drivers were clobbered with 1.23million tickets in 2008, of which 1.03million were issued by speed cameras, the Home Office report revealed.

The tickets raised more than £73million for the Treasury that year, or £200,000 a day.

In total, 16million tickets have been issued since 1997, raising £913million.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1267278/New-speed-cameras-trap-motorists-space-trial-UK.html#ixzz0lphwCcKe

By my calculation 1.23 million tickets raises just shy of £74,000,000.

Was that really less than Mr Cowell’s tax bill for that year? I am astonished

(Or was that just another “It’s only the internet, lets make up a figure and hope nobody checks”?)

Moggy

Like many things in life driving involves risk, and the correct calculation of that risk is often the difference between an accident and no accident.

Something you have to think about very carefully when you drive a nearly 40-year old MG as daily transport, trust me! As opposed to the modern car “point and shoot, it’ll do it” mentality that seems to prevail.

Our local council was made to pay to have a load of fixed cameras fitted between Hull and York. Do they see a penny of the fines? No. It all goes down to that there London…

So where does the money go from the fines imposed as a result of speed camera activity?

theyre not money making machine BTW. the gov’t earns more money from tax off of simon cowell than from the whole speed camera system.

…blanket speed limits imposed by bureaucrats…

Well, that’s the real problem isn’t it? While speed limits aren’t exactly arbitrary they are somewhat ‘nominal’ and just because you aren’t speeding it doesn’t mean you are safe. I like to think that I’ve enough skill and experience to judge when to exceed the speed limit safely…

…the problem is all the ‘idiots’ that make the roads unsafe think that too! :rolleyes:

I don’t disagree with either of you, notwithstanding Moggy’s patronising comment. Of course we are all guilty of rubbish driving from time to time. But in the context of this debate, that is not a defence, is it? The fact is that we could avoid taking the risks we often do and so avoid that feeling in the pit of stomach together with the “Phew, just made it” comment to ourselves.

Like many things in life driving involves risk, and the correct calculation of that risk is often the difference between an accident and no accident.