OK, I know it's controvesial but some roads do need speed cameras to stop very high-speed antics. So, even if you think there are too may speed cameras generally, can you think of a road that would benefit from having a camera?
My nomination is the A361 Frome by-pass, which is a single carriageway with a long straight. It seems to be something of a playground for very fast bikers - I mean seriously fast. I heard tell a few years ago that a biker had done over 160 mph along this road. You can hear the bikes travelling at great speed - especially at weekends and at night - you can tell by how the source of the sound moves that these bikes are nowhere near keeping to 60mph.
On one occasion I saw a biker on a powerful bike who was riding back and forth between two roundabouts, presumably timing himself - this was on a busy afternoon. I'm not talking about a kid on a moo-ped but a someone on serious pseudo-racer.
Usually it's assumed that if a biker comes a-cropper through their own recklessness, it's them that suffers. But the two fatal accidents I know of involving speeding bikers on the Frome by-pass have both killed pedal cyclists, not the bikers responsible.
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Sofa, would suggest your description of the roads there would better warrant SPECS than Gatso? They will just slow down for the Gatso unless they put several of them on the road?
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Aren't most SPECS cameras mounted forward facing? Not something I've studied but that's my impression.
In which case not a bid threat to speeding motorcycles
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Fair point Commer - wonder if any fines could be appealed on the basis of discrimination then??
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I've got 2 candidates for you:
1) A2038 King George VI Avenue in Hove, where it passes through the dip at Toad's Hole at the end of Goldstone Valley. Frankly, we need a pair of them here, one for each direction.
Southbound traffic coming from the direction of Devil's Dyke and the A27 junction is limited to 50 down the 1 in 10 gradient, dropping to 30 about 150 yards before the valley bottom. Northbound traffic is limited to 30 down the hill away from traffic lights at the junction with Clarke Avenue/Court Farm Road, rising to 50 once through the valley bottom, with a crawler lane up the hill towards the A27. 2 turnings off the southbound side, both very busy with traffic emerging.
Thanks to people who are apparently unable to perceive a 3-foot diameter 30 sign with a yellow back panel, and also those who treat the northbound lane as a run-up for the hill, you take your life in your hands when coming out of either of the turnings. I've lost count of the number of near-misses I've seen due entirely to people pulling out and not expecting approaching traffic to be bearing down on them at getting on double the limit.
Local camera people frequently have a mobile trap up the hill near the lights, which is all well and good but does nothing about the mayhem in the valley bottom.
2) Water Lane, Angmering, on the stretch between Dappers Lane and the bypass. I'll gladly take a bi-directional camera here in exchange for the two idiotically mis-sited pinch points (of the "give way to oncoming traffic" variety) currently installed, one of which is less than 30 yards from a nearly blind side-turning. Needless to say the pinch points do nothing to slow the traffic down - they merely increase the risk of head-on collisions.
I can probably think of a few more but that'll do for now. Generally speaking I abhor the idea of speed cameras but in the 2 locations described, I can think of nothing else that will get some folk to pull their brains out of their backsides and drive sensibly.
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We are plagued by speeding motorbikes, boy racers and older Imp/Mitsu drivers with tin can exhausts (who should know better but are having the mid life crisis).
Feltham Road, between Ashford (Surrey) and Feltham (London Borough of Hounslow).
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I'd say those roads need a manned police speed trap, not a camera.
Pull them over straight away. No problems over driver identity, no two week delay until a ticked drops on their doormat whilst they're free to continue speeding.
Get a police officer to deal with them there and then, and the shame of being pulled over and having to explain themselves to an officer of the law might slow them down more than an impersonal ticket generated by a machine. The police might even pick up a few drunk or dangerous drivers and those without insurance or mot too.
Edited by Ravenger on 06/08/2009 at 13:48
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Leicester is an awful place to drive most of the time - congestion, ring roads and incredibly agressive drivers (I find this even compared to London). But the A6 London Road between Victoria Park and Oadby racecourse (about half a mile?) would be my nomination. There are signs warning speed cameras but there aren't any and people know it.
It's a long, fairly straight bit (30mph limit) with a bus lane on one side that's only restricted for 1.5 hrs a day. Thus it becomes a race track with cars weaving about up to 50-60mph along there, more often than not trying to "outdo" one another. There are numerous turnings into residential streets, pedestrain crossings and a couple of schools which make it all the more nuts. Over the past few years there have been a spate of nasty accidents on this stretch, and my mate who lives along here frequently witnesses/ hears bangs and screeches as it all goes wrong.
Edited by Webmaster on 07/08/2009 at 01:48
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Here is my list...
end of list.
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I'm sure this isn't what you mean but I would nominate
Downing Street.
A couple of 'humps' too for good measure.
A total waste time but aren't most traffic calming measures...
Steve.
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Outside every school. I am amazed at how fast some idiots drive past our village school - even during drop-off/pick-up times.
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Not enough space to lst them all.
Why do idiots insist on overtaking me when I am doing 30, in a 30 area!
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Yawn.
All right, some people think they should be everywhere and some think there shouldn't be any.
I incline to the latter group. But I do know a place where a camera was needed and has now been installed. It means you can't waft down that bit of road at a safe 50 any more. But it also stops the people who used to undertake at 70 in the bus lane. There were only one or two a day, but it was very dangerous.
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Why do idiots insist on overtaking me when I am doing 30 in a 30 area!
Maybe because your 30mph on your speedo is really about 27mph in reality....and:
-the speed limit there used to be 40mph (in some cases more);
-the road is long and straight with plenty of view; etc...
so by overtaking you and showing an indicated 37mph, (a reality 34mph) it's still perfectly safe and most unlikely to be in the prosecution zone
if you were talking about an area with many hazards about e.g. o/s a school when the kids are about i'd agree with you....if you're not, then i probably wouldn't
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"There are signs warning speed cameras but there aren't any and people know it."
If that really is the case and they aren't signs which indicate a mobile camera is sometimes in the area they have to be removed.
Local authorities can't put up camera signs where they like.
Edited by daveyjp on 06/08/2009 at 15:32
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"Get a police officer to deal with them there and then, and the shame of being pulled over and having to explain themselves to an officer of the law might slow them down more than an impersonal ticket generated by a machine"
I wrote a lengthy letter to Surrey police requesting they mount such an operation. I haven't seen them once.
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The Angmering one is that the road north of the BMW garage??
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The Angmering one is that the road north of the BMW garage??
That's it - the bit where the traffic coming in from the bypass has to give way twice in about a hundred yards.
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