news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/7669100.stm
Swindon Borough Council wants to pull out of the Safety Camera Partnership which would mean the end of standing and mobile speed cameras in the town.
"It is in line with a Department for Transport report published on the 25th of September which said speed is only reponsible for six percent of accidents," he said.
The authority said it spends £320,000 per year on funding speed cameras in the town.
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they should leave the cameras in place if they take them out they will only end up losing the money in some dodgy off shore bank collapse :-)
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It's a funding dispute. The article says:
The council decided to review its involvement in the local safety camera partnership scheme following a change in speed camera funding rules, which mean the Treasury keeps proceeds of fines and then makes road-safety grants to councils.
I reckon that this is a tactical ploy, and the council is just angling to restore a higher share of the take from the cameras.
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Don't mind getting rid of static cameras: limited value. Tax the speeders to fund mobile cameras, averaging cameras, and most importantly, ring-fence traffic police to grab the other offences. The more effective, the lower the fine revenue. But the impatient/testosterone rich will never learn, so the funds will keep rolling in.....
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Don't mind getting rid of static cameras: limited value.
Average speed cameras are a different matter.
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Good or not so good? The averaging ones.
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Good or not so good? The averaging ones.
Much more effective. There's no point in doing the old brake-for-the-camera-then-speed-off trick
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Yes. Work well on M25. Apparently only 1 in 10,000 transgress. Could just be propaganda, but anecdotally, all were well behaved and traffic flowed well last time I was on the M25 near Heathrow. More please, if that's what it takes to promote free flowing traffic. Those with false or rotatable plates giving "immunity" would be more conspicuous. Which is probably why they don't poke their heads above the parapet.
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IME you cant do much more than 25 mph through central Swindon so, perhaps £320k could be spent on relieving congestion, itself a causal factor in accident stats.
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But the impatient/testosterone rich will never learn sothe funds will keep rolling in.....
Hmmm so only "rich" people speed then? Utter rubbish.
Still it's true that those grubby oiks and filthy layout types probably can't afford to run anything that can get a decent turn of speed, what? *
* Tongue firmly in cheek
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>Hmmm so only "rich" people speed then? Utter rubbish.
Mmmm, maybe if he'd used a hyphen? "testosterone-rich".
NW is 100% correct though. This is a battle over who gets the revenue and some point-scoring in local politics.
If you want the full story (and lot's of heated discussion) search the archives at the online Swindon Advertiser.
Kevin...
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I forgot to mention that Swindon Council is Conservative-controlled but the local MP is Labour.
The council claim that there is a big difference between improving road safety and reducing KSI statistics and that their £300K annual outlay could be used to better effect on other measures.
The local MP claims that if the cameras are removed "boy-racers from all over the country" will descend upon Swindon.
Either way I guess the Swindon tourism industry will benefit ;-)
Kevin...
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I seem to remember that this is the council where the leader ( Mr Bluh ?) is violently opposed to speed cameras on account of he accumulated 12 points and got a ban....
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Well they don't all flock to County Durham, and that's a place that's worth visiting, don't see why Swindon think they'll be inundated*. :)
*tic
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Re Kevin's comment. A hyphen before rich would have helped:)
Edited by nortones2 on 15/10/2008 at 13:15
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In all of the debate about speed cams we don't seem to question where limits are set any longer.
Leaving aside green issues (which I've had enough of for the time being) is there any reason why the motorway speed limit couldn't go up to, say, 90 with gantry limits for congestion, hazards etc? Most modern cars will handle that speed comfortably and are able to brake from it rapidly.
I know that not everyone's ability in a car is equally good - course I'm an excellent driver, as the autistic character in Rainman said - but that's true at whatever speed.
I think I'd object less to control cameras if I felt that the limits they were imposing were realistic; in general I'd still like to see the majority of them scrapped.
Any thoughts?
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Swindon's contribution of £320K to the scamera partnership only provides 8 cameras - 5 speeding ones and 3 red lights ones. Does/did this represent value for money?
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>I know that not everyone's ability in a car is equally good - but that's true at whatever speed.<
That statement may be a simple fact, but it starts a specious argument. The consequences of collisions are not the same at whatever speed.
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Congratulations to Swindon Council for withdrawing funding from the speed trap partnership, in spite of being pressurised by the local plod. They said that the speed cameras were a blatant tax on motorists (that's the gist of it).
I just hope their different measures end up worse then the cameras, though i doubt it.
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Usual biased coverage from the Beeb this morning who wheeled out a mother whose son had been killed by a speeding driver last Christmas to condemn the move.
The thinking behind the change in strategy is perfectly sound. Deaths have continued to go up despite camera proliferation, and an independent report by the TRL has suggested speed enforcement is not the most effective way to reduce deaths. County Durham also consistently ranks among the lowest in the road deaths figures, despite only having one fixed speed camera in the whole county. The biggest argument for cameras is financial - they're a cheap, politicially acceptable "solution" to a politically sensitive problem.
I have to admit to being very surprised at the police's stance, given that professional roads policing has been one of the biggest casualties of camera proliferation. I thought traffic police hated the things.
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You need to make the distinction between front line Traffic Police and an ACPO office bound, politicised senior officer. ACPO are Political animals who trot out the party line. They haven't seen the inside of a Police Car for years.
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"The thinking behind the change in strategy is perfectly sound. Deaths have continued to go up despite camera proliferation".
The statement that deaths have continued to go up is just not true. These are the latest government statistic for 2007 compared wiht 2006
The number of people killed in road accidents fell by 7 per cent from 3,172 in 2006 to 2,946 in 2007.
The number of deaths among car users in 2007 was 1,432, 11 per cent less than in the previous year.
There were 646 pedestrian deaths, 4 per cent less than in 2006.
The number of pedal cyclists killed fell by 7 per cent from 146 in 2006 to 136 in 2007.
There were 588 motorcycle user fatalities in 2007, 2 per cent lower than during 2006.
You can argue as to the cause of the reductions but the death rate is going down and proponents of the current road safety regime would seem to have the statistics on thier side
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CGNorwich - The argument from the Swindon Councillor was that KSIs in Swindon have increased, therefore they need to spend resources on areas where accidents are happening - in particular rural areas.
I thought as a spokesperson and a Councillor he was very weak at putting his message across.
This decision doesn't mean cameras will disappear either.
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I thought as a spokesperson and a Councillor he was very weak at putting his message across.
Statistically. I don't think he has an argument. Overall road deaths in the UK are going down; that is a fact. A slight increase in the Swindon area does not prove that the current road safety strategy is failing.
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It doesn't prove it's failing nationally but he represents Swindon not the rest of the UK.
North Yorkshire don't have any speed cameras as they don't see it as the best way of dealing with KSIs in their area. Swindon have merely reassessed where their £300,000 goes and see it as being better spent in areas where there has been an increase in accidents.
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The 6% canard was dealt with by the ASA, after a journalist complained that speed was not a major factor in road deaths and injuries. This is the ASA adjudication, which explains the background. tinyurl.co.uk/9qae
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I've spent 13 years attending accidents (as opposed to looking at statistics) and speed only features in a small percentage of them. It's usually just plain old careless driving and/or lack of attention.
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But you must concede that plain old careless driving and lack of attention is potentially more lethal at 50 mph than 30 mph.
I am ambivalent towards the use of speed cameras. On one hand the lack of discretion in their operation is unfair and unreasonable. Driving at 47 mph thorugh a 40 limit at 4.00 a.m. is probably not an issue that deserve 3 points and a £60 fine. On the other hand there does seem to have been somehing of a sea change in the way people drive over the past few years. Traffic speeds do seem to have reduced and my impression is that there are fewer drivers exceeding the speed limits by a wide margin.
In cannot be denied that there is a reduction in the overall number of deaths and serious injuries on the road.
Whether this is because of the reduction in speeds and whether or not this is in turn attributable to speed cameras is of course not conclusively provable. Somewhat reluctantly however I personally am coming round to the view that there problaly is a link and that just possibly the means justify the ends if it means less deaths and injuries on the roads
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Speaking as someone who drives in Swindon on a fairly regular basis, I have been amused by the whole "Swindon is getting rid of it's speed cameras" angle of the story.
In my experience there are now more speed cameras in Swindon because the Wilts Constabulary is sending out unmarked vans (usually white Sprinters) and bikes (white Deauvilles with dayglo'd panniers) to various points around the town.
There are a few obvious places where they set up but generally speaking they can turn up anywhere. Consequently traffic speeds on some roads (notably the Great Western Way) are much reduced.
Whether greater compliance of 40mph limits on a dual carriageways away from residential areas is of pressing concern, is of course a different matter altogether...
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I have a number of issues with cameras. When we found out that cameras were to be introduced in my area (where I live and worked-in my pre-m/way road policing days), we were all expecting to have some form of consultation regrading their location. After all, we attended all the fatal/serious accidents and knew of specific locations where there had been a number of awful accidents.
All the locations were on rural roads, not particularly busy, but where limits were ignored with regular serious consequences.
Predictably, we heard nothing. The cameras then appeared in the town centres, on 30mph roads, where there was an extremely high volume of traffic. There had never been any serious accidents at the locations (apart from one, where a drunken pedestrian walked in front of a car). We were further annoyed to read the dubious statistics that were trotted out in the paper to support them.
All they achieved was to further alienate us from the public (as well as making a few quid)
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"There had never been any serious accidents at the locations"
All cameras now have to be located where there have been a number of KSIs and a minimum set percentage of vehicles break the posted limit.
Your rural areas may have had accidents, but on a quiet NSL road chances are the percentage of those breaking the limit isn't high enough. Powering a rural camera may not be easy either.
Edited by daveyjp on 23/10/2008 at 21:35
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What upsets me is why cant a labour council do this.
i could never vote for the tories as bad as things have become, but hats of to this lot.
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KSIs can be utterly random, like pinning the tale on a donkey, if some drink or drug fuelled berk drives badly and it is a matter of time before they have an accident
then there's known suicide spots, which also skew the figures if a vehicle is involved as well
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The rules have changed, although this may nto contradict what has been said above:
tinyurl.com/6bhs78
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