Best comments: Are you for or against speed cameras?

Claptrap!!!

I completely agree with Pickle. except that driving instruction per se does not make good drivers. There are far too many bad drivers – usually those that don’t read the speed signs that are on all major roads close to the speed cameras.- They tend to ignore their driving instructions after a few weeks after their test.

‘pickle’ has it right; better driver training. The air is a very much safer place in which to travel than roads – no one has yet ever crashed with the sky!, but pilot training is very much more disciplined and extensive than that for student car drivers. I recall my youngest daughter learning to drive and on returning home from a driving lesson with a local school, she told us how her instructor had told her that he thought that he ‘could soon get you (her) through’. I told her that I was not happy for her ‘to get through’: I wanted her to be so thoroughly profficient that she would stay unhurt and alive. I took over her tuition and persevered until I knew she would be a safe and confident driver. From the point where she was talking of ‘getting through’ to when she passed the test was, for her, a rather disagreeably long few months! She’s enjoyed a safe, accident-free Twenty years or so now.
Message! – Get rid of all the ‘Safety’ nonsense, including cameras and start making people aware of the value of their own self-preservation by thorough, disciplined driving tuition.
But of course, if we all drive so safely – not necessarily slowly, REVENUE will diminish and that says it all?

Cameras DO NOT “criminalise” motorists. It is a motoring offence, NOT a criminal offence. But I have little doubt that you know that anyway. And what constitutes a “simple mistake”? And how do YOU know that they are “often in non hazardous places”?

Cameras are set to trigger at 10%+2mph above the given limit – ie 35mph in thirty limits, 46mph in forty limits and so on – and the average speed of people caught speeding in 30mph limits, for example, is 39mph (source: Roadsafe), and 85% of people caught were driving at 37mph or more (source: ACPO).

As for “non hazardous places”, just about all cameras in use today are only there because there were four (or more) fatal or serious injury crashes in the three-year period prior to the installation of the camera, because THEY were the criteria set by the DfT (as of since the commencement of the Safety Camera Partnership programme back in 2002).

And what do you mean that: “Cameras are the only solution on offer”? Would you mind elaborating?

As for cameras being ugly, have you written to your local Partnership to ask them if they can beautify them? Or hows about we hide and conceal them all……….

And when you say: “Gone are the joys of the open road”, what do you mean exactly?

And ditto: “Police should set an example at ALL times”.

Shot down in flames…well, maybe it will teach me a lesson or two. I bow to your superior knowledge on information from ACPO and Roadsafe. However, I’m not the only one to believe that some cameras – not all – are there with an eye to the revenue they produce. Of course I can’t give you chapter and verse and this is debatable. So, yes, you are correct to shout at me for making this generalisation. I don’t totally withdraw it. Nor the idea that individual authorities can set their own flash points and it is not a good idea to rely on any formulae to avoid being caught. I keep to the limit.

Like most humble mortals I get my motoring wrong now and then. I try and drive sensibly and carefully, but inevitably there have been times when the car has gone faster than I wanted it to. I correct this. Do I slam on the brakes when I am surprised by a thirty limit round the bend? No, I let the car slow down naturally and then keep to the limit. Usually, I’m there abouts before hand anyway. A simple mistake can, of course be serious, but I was drawing a distinction between those who deliberately set out to ignore the rules and those who transgress by accident. Again, perhaps you were right to critisize this generalisation.
As far as I know, no one has produced any deterrent alternative, since speed cameras were introduced. Speed bumps, chicanes etc reduce speed, but th