Speed Cameras in the UK Speeding in the UK
Those little yellow boxes at the side of the road are a familiar sight to most UK drivers, and a far cry from the old days of coppers pointing radar guns from the roadside. Indeed, while there are still mobile camera units in the UK, most of them are placed in clearly-marked vehicles on bridges over motorways and dual carriageways, and the old camaraderie of flashing a warning to oncoming traffic is long past.
And so we have speed cameras or, as the government would have it, safety cameras. The theory is that, by placing a safety camera in an accident blackspot, drivers are encouraged/forced to observe the speed limit and accidents are thus reduced, lives saved, the populace as a whole better off. The practice is that, while many blackspots do now sport their own Gatso camera, there are also plenty of them in places where there is no apparent blackspot to police. In some cases, notably the A2 out of London towards Kent - a perfectly good dual carriageway which was previously at the national speed limit of 70 miles per hour - the speed limit was lowered to 50mph and a series of speed cameras were put in.
The A2 is a shining example of how static speed cameras are no deterrent whatsoever. A gentle drive down there will reveal that many drivers tootle along well above the clearly-signposted speed limit and simply slam on the anchors when they approach the little yellow box. They'll do this for every camera on their way out of London. The same behaviour repeats all across the country. All this acceleration and deceleration does is to make tempers worse for all road users. Those who speed and brake, speed and brake often take ridiculous risks to cut in and out and round law-abiding traffic in a bid to reduce their journey time. In the process, they annoy the law-abiding drivers who object to being tailgated, carved-up, tooted or subjected to all the usual hand signals. Tempers fray, concentration lapses and, before you know it, there's been a shunt - usually so minor (no injuries) it doesn't enter the road safety statistics that are supposedly being improved by the presence of the cameras.
Even if a driver does get flashed by the camera, there is no guarantee that they will either be fined or have their license endorsed. there are many web sites, some specialist, others merely forums on sites more generally designed for keen drivers, which give instructions on how to contest a speeding ticket. Ironically, it is the person who gets caught in a momentary lapse who is more likely to get a speeding conviction, with serial offenders knowing the ropes sufficiently to get off more often than not. A deterrent that works only on those more generally inclined to be law-abiding is no deterrent at all.
So if the little yellow box is not an effective deterrent, how does one prevent people from speeding?
There are various ways to tackle the problem. One of the most effective, at present, can be seen at roadworks all over the UK: the average speed check. Rather than testing a driver's speed at one location, the average speed check uses cameras above the road to read registration plates at the entrance to the speed check area, then again at the exit, and passes the registrations and times to a computer which calculates the vehicle's average speed over that stretch of road. Very simple and, if my own observations have any validity, very effective: all vehicles driving at the imposed limit, no sudden acceleration or deceleration, far fewer shunts than before.
The average speed check, though, is a solution that only works in small areas with relatively few entrances and exits to the road. Ifwe are to find an effective deterrent to speeding, we need to understand and tackle the issues that cause it. Our national speed limit for motorways was established at a time when few cars could even reach the dizzy heights of 70mph. Now, cars are faster, brakes more effective, the passengers more safely enclosed than at any time in the past. Revising the speed limit in the light of technological advance might encourage more people to keep within its boundaries.
