Risking Cameras

Did you know that this coming week is "Scrap Speed Cameras Week"? No?, neither did the Gorse Fox.

Now the mobility prevention nazis are probably sharpening their stingers already at the very implication that these sacred totems be removed from the roadside. Before you leap on the bandwagon, however, the Gorse Fox recommend you read today's Telegraph.

Quite rightly it points out that:

we learn to adjust our speed in order to remain safe in the prevailing road, weather and traffic conditions. The speed at which you choose to drive is an output from your own internal risk management system. Yet the DfT regards speed as an "input".

A point GF has often made.

Cameras give us legal compliance targets, not safety targets. And the divergence between the two is now very marked. We now have a nation of drivers concentrating on compliance rather than safety. The whole concept of speed cameras denies that we are capable of managing risk, yet road safety absolutely depends on individual risk management in real time.

Amen to that. Driving as much as he does each week, the Gorse Fox is amazed at the sights he sees. His observation is that speed cameras do nothing for road safety, but seeing a Police Traffic Control vehicle has a great effect on traffic in general. There is a place for speed cameras... and it's outside schools, and hospitals, not on urban freeways and good open roads.

Of course, Speed Cameras won't be scrapped. That is because they are nothing to do with road safety, but are just another way of raising money. Their negative effect on road safety is therefore not relevant to the debate.