Swindon To Scrap Speed Cameras?

[George & Bill]

Why do you see lots of cameras on long straight stretches of dual carriageway and none on residential side roads? (Clue: They're there to make easy money in situations where lots of people exceed the speed limit because it is perfectly safe to go faster for much of the time, not to deter speeding in situations where speeding invariably is dangerous ...)

So put more speed cameras on the residential side roads, and review the speed limits on the straight dual carriageways. Don't see where the argument for removing any cameras begins to emerge here

 

[detective-boy]

Don't see where the argument for removing any cameras begins to emerge here

I have never advocated wholesale removal. My posts on this thread make that perfectly clear. Why do you think that I do? But taking them away from sites where there is no evidence that there is any need for them would be part of changing to a sensible enforcement regime, just like in relation to every other crime.

 

[George & Bill]

I have never advocated wholesale removal. My posts on this thread make that perfectly clear. Why do you think that I do? But taking them away from sites where there is no evidence that there is any need for them would be part of changing to a sensible enforcement regime, just like in relation to every other crime.

I have not implied that you support 'wholesale removal'. Your posts fail to provide a case for the removal of any significant quantity of speed cameras. On roads where cameras currently enforce excessively low limits, one could argue for the limits to be raised. The only roads on which cameras are not helpful, according to my logic and yours, in on those where once could safely drive as fast as one wished; I would suggest that there are few, if any, of these roads in existence.

 

[roryer]

See that?

Proof positive that the "(Only) Speed Kills!" campaign is having a detrimental effect on the capabilities of drivers.

For the millionth time:

The legal speed limit is NOT necessarily safe.

Thanks DB, I agree totally that in urban areas that the speed limit for cars is generally way too high.

Basically a safe limit in towns, (apart from segregated arterial roads), should be considered to be one where in collision with a pedestrian would be unlikley to cause serious injury. For a 1 - 2 ton vehicle this would be very low. To achieve this takes more than speed cameras.

The only way to create a place that people want to live in, that is not designed primarily for the needs of cars, which brings the associated noise, danger and pollution, is not to tinker around the edges of failed model of urban design, (with the likes of speed cameras used to control the very worst excesses of a car dominated urban environment), but to radically redesign the urban realm. In this I broadly agree with the sentiments of Swindon council.

Use of shared space, and giving pedestrians and cycles absolute priority, encouraging them to use the whole road and making cars wait for them, means that our cities will become places to live in, not just travel through.

Places that just ripped up the car dominated urban design model have been massively economically successful, as both people want to live there, and businesses also want to locate there. l

Places like Groningen, Netherlands, and Lund in Sweden, are two of the best examples and are both very similar in size to Swindon. They are both excellent places to live in, vibrant and growing economically very fast.

In this model cars aren't banned, its just that they must give way to humans, and thus its very slow to drive. Cycling there can be a shock, cars even have to wait for you to pass before they can even to enter or exit roundabouts. Its rare to see a car exceeding 10mph, and even seeing one going that fast is unusual.

This tends to discourage people from driving, while making cycling relatively quick and very safe, which encourages most people to cycle. In Gronningen 60% of all trips are by bicycle, compared to Swindon where it is about 2%.

I however dissagree with the council in that the article seemed to suggest they wanted to just remove speed cameras, and while they alude to some other forms of urban tinkering, did not give any indication of a plan to radially change Swindon along the Lund model.

Speed cameras do not work very well, and certainly do not eliminate road deaths, but they are much better than nothing, and generally do reduce KSI and are cheaper and easier than redesigning the urban realm for people.

Only if the council had said they are reducing the speed limit, giving priority to pedestrians and cyclists, reducing road space for cars, introducing a Bus Rapid Transit system, drastically reducing on street parking, and also removing speed cameras would I support removing speed cameras.

 

[berniedicters]

Seems to disprove the lie that they're moneyspinners.

I've encountered a few daft ones, but we need loads more in town - set to 20mph or less - if they could only be made cost-effective.

Better still, passive transponders in every car which could be used for fair road pricing and taxing too.

I did some research when I got caught by one, and it turns out that the "profit margin" on them is about 14%

I was very pleased about this, as I reckon the court case (I won, and got costs) probably - conservatively - cost them about two grand. Which means, at about £8.50 profit a ticket, that they were going to have to issue about 240 tickets to get their money back.

It'd be nice to think that having such things happen would be enough to discourage safety camera partnerships from reckless kite-flying ticket issuing, rather than concentrating on clear-cut cases where someone was obviously speeding.

In any event, the calculation Swindon needs to be making is "does spending £400,000 on camera enforcement achieve an improvement in road safety that is worth that spend?", not "how much are we making on the deal?". It's situations like this that call into question the constant propaganda that these things are really about safety at all - they could be, and they should be, but I don't think they are.

 

[berniedicters]

In terms of motorway speeding, why do the government permit cars that can do more than 70mph? A hypothetical question really, I know the answer is money, but really only emergency vehicles require speeds higher than this.

Look at the effect of having lorries restricted to 56mph. That's where your two mile overtakes, and all the other things that make lorries far more of an imposition on the roads than they need to be come from. Now extend that to cars.

It isn't safe having - as inevitably would be the case - everybody travelling at almost exactly the same maximum speed. Sometimes there's a case for nipping up to 75mph to slip past someone doing 65, rather than crawling past them at a few mph more than they're going. It's also a further step towards deskilling drivers, and the more you do that - as with the ever-increasing array of regulatory signs (eg, 50, 40, 30 stuff every time you approach a town) - that overloads drivers with non-essential information and impairs their ability to focus on essential stuff, like people stepping out in front of them and what the other idiot on the road is doing.

And there's the psychology. As d_b has already pointed out, the main result of this obsessive focus on speed is a genuine and very pervasive belief that "if it's legal, it's safe". I've heard tales of people getting out of pranged cars saying "But I was doing the speed limit", despite the fact that a bend signposted for 40 might not be safe at 40 when it's just had its first rain for a fortnight and the road's as slippery as a greasy thing on the National Day Of Lard.

I think we need to concentrate more on education than enforcement (though we do need the latter, too). I think this is one of the reasons it's a pity that another effect of camera enforcement has been a vast reduction in the number of coppers patrolling the roads. Personally, I think being pulled over by a rozzer and told "that was a really, really stupid thing you did back there, you moron" is going to have far more impact on road safety than a bit of paper popping through your door a week after you zipped past a camera 10mph too fast. And, of course, cameras don't detect people doing really, really stupid things - they just detect people going a bit faster than the limit, which might well be a stupid thing, but only a tiny part of the cornucopia of stupid things that we are all capable of doing as drivers.

 

[berniedicters]

The alternative is the development of flexible speed enforcement, either by wider use of managed, variable speed limits, by developing new technology capable of applying different prosecution thresholds in different conditions or (and this could be done right now) by the application of discretion in pursuing prosecutions (e.g. someone clocked at 50mph on a 40mph dual carriageway during daytime traffic conditions gets prosecuted but someone doing the same on the same road, in clear, dry, empty conditions at 3am gets a warning letter and 55mph (or even 60mph) becomes the prosecution threshold).

You know what I think would be the best use of camera enforcement technology? Video cameras, using radar and timings to determine when people are following too closely. It'd be easy to flag up such cases, and a quick review of the footage from a few seconds either side would mop up the "he just pulled in front of me"/"he braked sharply" stuff.

From my own experience as an occasionally mediocre driver, I'd say that following too closely is a far better metric for determining if someone is driving crappily than driving too fast. It's also, I suspect, when factored in with speed, a far more dangerous activity: galloping down an empty motorway at 90 is clearly and self-evidently a less risky act than tailgating someone at 60. When we see those big fog-bound motorway prangs, 8 dead and 200 cars bent, more often than not it comes down to lots of people not leaving enough room.

Oh, and as an incidental benefit: get people thinking hard about how close they are to the car in front, and what happens? Yup, they slow down. Everybody wins.

Obviously, with the 1980s technology on which speed cameras were (and are) based, it couldn't be done, but it would be a piece of cake now.

 

[Iam]

Oh, homophobia too. Loving your work! Prick.

Anyone using the term "drama queen" is homophobic, now?

Purlease!

Let me try again. You're such a cock (that ok, or is that a homophobic term, too?) that you're actually starting to be funny. Well, entertaining, anyway.

 

[denniseagle]

Driving ability

The one major flaw that I can see with the argument that people should be allowed to drive at whatever speed they 'feel' is appropriate for the conditions is that of ability.

A fully trained Police driver( for example) has more ability than the average driver BUT would your average Joe Bloggs in his Mondeo/Vectra/BMW/et al accept that FACT?
Be honest now........... How many out there consider themselves to be good drivers?

Or to put it another way...... How many consider themselves to be poor drivers?

Truely competent drivers do not see speed limits as a 'target' to be met but as simply the maximum speed allocated to that particular stretch of carriageway.
It is after all the MAXIMUM permitted speed not the MANDATORY.

The proliferation of speed cameras is quite simply in correlation to the number of idiots who simply cannot drive within the laws laid down .

Remember when you signed for your licence?
You accepted to abide by the laws pertaining to holding said licence.

WHAT you didn't read the small print??

 

[Isambard]

What is interesting watching this deabte is the assumption from the car lobby that any changes to how speed limits operate would per se, result in less restriction.

If it is 3AM on a dry night on a straight, well lit, barriered road and the speed limit is 100 MPH, then OK, maybe.

But the reverse works as well. Streets that are residential down to 20 MPH, sensors that change the road signs down by 20-30 MPH if it rains etc. It isn't fair that fines for road traffic crime just go into "the pot". I'd rather see them going into improvements to public transport.

 

[detective-boy]

Anyone using the term "drama queen" is homophobic, now?

Only in the sense that it is offensive to many gay people (for the same reason that "gay" used as in "That's so gay!" is). It doesn't necessarily indicate that the person using it is actually homophobic ... though if, having been made aware of the fact that it is offensive, they continue to use it, it may be indicative of that ...

However, when used, as here, to specifically insult an individual who is gay, it probably does indicate homophobia from the outset.

So go fuck yourself.

 

[detective-boy]

It is after all the MAXIMUM permitted speed not the MANDATORY.

The point is it is an arbitrary, one-size fits all circumstances maximum. Set in a very different world to the one we now live in.

The idiots now believe that as long as they are not exceeding it they are safe (and, in effect, aim at that as the speed they "should" be going).

Thoughtful competent drivers constantly find themselves frustrated by the fact that whilst they drive at a lower speed when the circumstances dictate they are unable to travel at a higher speed when circumstances dictate that is safe.

Yes, there should be a maximum. But on a motorway it is probably now 90 or even 100mph. Otherwise the law falls even further into disrepute.

 

[Iam]

Only in the sense that it is offensive to many gay people (for the same reason that "gay" used as in "That's so gay!" is). It doesn't necessarily indicate that the person using it is actually homophobic ... though if, having been made aware of the fact that it is offensive, they continue to use it, it may be indicative of that ...

However, when used, as here, to specifically insult an individual who is gay, it probably does indicate homophobia from the outset.

So go fuck yourself.

Because, of course, everyone here *must* be aware of your sexuality!

More self important bullshit from the board's most posturing purveyor of such.

Get the fuck over yourself you complete loser cunt!

 

[detective-boy]

But the reverse works as well.

And so it should. As I have pointed out, competent drivers already drive at LESS than the speed limit when the circumstances dictate. I think your assumption that the "car lobby" (of which I am not a member, whatever it is ...) would believe otherwise.

Watch a motorway in heavy spray or mist/fog: competent drivers travelling at perhaps 80/85mph in normal vision slow to perhaps 55/60 as visibility decreases, then slower still as it gets worse ... meanwhile the fuckits who were doing 69mph when they were overtaken earlier (probably whilst travelling unnecessarily in lane 2 of 3) overtake them, still doing 69mph and making absolutely no allowance for more braking distance.

THAT is the reality that the fuckwitted application of inappropriate speed limits creates. Wonderful, isn't it ...

 

[Isambard]

However, when used, as here, to specifically insult an individual who is gay, it probably does indicate homophobia from the outset.

I don't think Iam is homophobic in the slightest.

Get some fucking backbone hey and don't cry running for your mummy when there is a disagreement. Jesus, Christ, poofs these days.

 

[Iam]

Ta.

I didn't mean it that way, whether or not you believe me, and anything I think of you is based solely on what you post here, and the manner in which you deliver those posts...

On topic, I think that many, many motorists (often including myself) believe themselves to arrogantly know better about what they should be allowed to do and not. I worry that so many people think that noticing a camera and driving in a straight line at a continuous speed all at the same time is too difficult for them. And I think that it's very easy not to get done for speeding.

Course, as anyone who's ever been in a car with me will attest, that's obvious when you potter around everywhere at 1 mph below the speed limit... Ahem.

I think the whole "speed cameras make the roads less safe" is a red-herring argument provided by drivers who can't be bothered to learn to do more than drive and talk on their phones at the same time, and if you get done by them, it's your own stupid fault. Sorry, but there you go.

*leaves*

 

[detective-boy]

More self important bullshit from the board's most posturing purveyor of such.

Get the fuck over yourself you complete loser cunt!

Oh no! I get the title ... and then have it taken away from me only a sentence later ...

 

[detective-boy]

I think the whole "speed cameras make the roads less safe" is a red-herring argument provided by drivers who can't be bothered to learn to do more than drive and talk on their phones at the same time, and if you get done by them, it's your own stupid fault. Sorry, but there you go.

The fact that you stereotype everyone who ever exceeds the speed limit as "talk[ing] on their phones at the same time" is no surprise. Clearly you find it easier to assign simple characteristics to huge swathes of the population rather than realising that reality is far more differentiated than that ...

How wonderful it must be to be you. Are you married to untethered by any chance?

 

[stavros]

I haven't done any reading to back this up, but is there not a case that our society as a whole runs too quickly? Many people seem to constantly be in a rush to "maximise their productivity" (my quotation marks), and perhaps motor speeding can be a symptom of this. Thoughts?

 

[gentlegreen]

I haven't done any reading to back this up, but is there not a case that our society as a whole runs too quickly? Many people seem to constantly be in a rush to "maximise their productivity" (my quotation marks), and perhaps motor speeding can be a symptom of this. Thoughts?

It seems that way to me.

I started out riding motorcycles, but soon found out I didn't really enjoy high speed that much.

There are people who think nothing of living 30 miles from their workplace because of motorways, but for some of us, 3 or 4 hours of high speed travel to get to the seaside is something to be endured - though trundling along the A roads at a decent pace once you get there can be a pleasant diversion - but not with petrolheads trying to insert themselves up your exhaust pipe.

It's the way people drive in town that gets me - I'm suspicious of people who drive with the windows shut - let alone on the phone or distracted by people in the car. The very situation where they need to be focussed - and as mostly a cyclist and pedestrian I feel that's my domain. Just lately I've even witnessed excessive speed and stupidity by cyclists on my local mixed-use path.
.
The sooner they invent intelligent traffic sensing the better.
.

 

[detective-boy]

The sooner they invent intelligent traffic sensing the better.

NO!!!!!!

We need LESS gadgets in fucking cars, not more! So drivers have to concentrate on what they are doing.

(Did you see those stats on SatNav related collisions / near misses that were being batted around a couple of weeks ago? )

 

[Dhimmi]

None of this is to say that there aren't loads of pointless or counterproductive speed cameras - but most people who complain about them basically just want to be able to drive as fast as they like.

I'm not sure about that, I drive really quite slowly to the evident dismay of many fellow road users. I dislike cameras for two reasons, they're a hidden tax for the highest taxed drivers in the world and some of the driving you see neither side of cameras is generally more reckless, and dangerous, than the rest of the roads.

 

[suburbia]

Funnily enough, this afternoon when my boyfriend sighed "are there any speed cameras left in the country nowadays?" due to witnessing several examples of diabolical driving on the M4, it was shortly after passing the "Borough of Swindon" sign!

 

[gentlegreen]

NO!!!!!!

We need LESS gadgets in fucking cars, not more! So drivers have to concentrate on what they are doing.

(Did you see those stats on SatNav related collisions / near misses that were being batted around a couple of weeks ago? )

Sorry, I meant as a way to accurately detect sociopathic drivers and get them off the road (or into rehab).

 

[gentlegreen]

and some of the driving you see neither side of cameras is generally more reckless, and dangerous, than the rest of the roads.

I think I concur - I don't encounter speed cameras very often, but you can almost sense the arseholes behind getting frustrated when you don't accelerate once you've passed them.

Not helped of course by their position being published on the Interweb.

 

[berniedicters]

Sorry, I meant as a way to accurately detect sociopathic drivers and get them off the road (or into rehab).

Actually, this is probably the biggest bit of harm speed cameras have done: before we had speed cameras, we had the technology to accurately detect sociopathic drivers.

They were called "police officers".

Unfortunately, someone decided that detecting speeding ever-more-efficiently was more important than detecting a wide range of activities, all of them capable of impinging on road safety, was; so the result was less policemen and more cameras.

Most experienced drivers will tell you that they can spot a "wrong 'un" on the road, via a kind of sixth sense. I tend to think of it more as a kind of automotive body language, but you can tell by the way someone's positioniing their car, or the way they navigate obstacles, whether they're an alert and with-it driver or someone drifting around in a daze (or a drunken stupor).

There isn't a machine that can do the same job, yet we insist on moving more and more of our roads policing over to machines...

 

[Pingu]

imo any speed cameras should only be those that take images of the front of vehicles you know the ones that also get a picture of the drivers face.

 

[denniseagle]

The point is it is an arbitrary, one-size fits all circumstances maximum. Set in a very different world to the one we now live in.

Irrelevant!
When applying for a licence to drive it is encumbant upon the individual to accertain and abide by the legal requirements required to be able to drive legally.
Whether you think the law is correct concerning certain speed limits has no bearing whatsoever.
To use your motorway speed of 90-100mph doesn't take into account of one major factor.
LGV's are restricted by law to a maximum speed of 60 mph.
You know that the present 70 mph limit is routinely ignored and 80-100 mph is the 'norm'
Add another 20-30 mph to your new maximum speed limit,so 90-100 becomes 120-130mph.
And LGV's still travelling at less than HALF the speed of other vehicles...............

The idiots now believe that as long as they are not exceeding it they are safe (and, in effect, aim at that as the speed they "should" be going).

]

My point exactly!!!

Being a good driver entails having the 'knowledge' of how to drive depending on conditions.
Unfortunately the driving test doesn't really cater for examining that aspect of a 'candidates' ability.
No motorway or night time driving, if you are fortunate to learn how drive and pass a test in the summer months you will have no concept, let alone experience, of how an icy road surface can affect a vehicle , until you end up rear ending the car in front or missing the bend completely and killing yourself.

Yet my 'question' remains unanswered.

Who out there would consider themselves to be a bad driver??
Form a queue here please.

 

[Dhimmi]

In this model cars aren't banned, its just that they must give way to humans, and thus its very slow to drive. Cycling there can be a shock, cars even have to wait for you to pass before they can even to enter or exit roundabouts. Its rare to see a car exceeding 10mph, and even seeing one going that fast is unusual.

A crackingly good thread and this a bloody good example of a great post on it. For me regulating the idea of giving a lot of respect and care around pedestrians and cyclists is too close to regulating the bloody obvious to be comfortable. But then I'm always crawling past cyclists and horses and stopping completely when passing schools at chucking out time. Maybe this is more of a large city problem?

I think I concur - I don't encounter speed cameras very often, but you can almost sense the arseholes behind getting frustrated when you don't accelerate once you've passed them.
Not helped of course by their position being published on the Interweb.

Well they become well known anyway don't they? Between here (Margate) and south London there's three, two within five miles and then the first of the London lot at the Black Prince, off Blackheath. But you're quite right you'll often find folk driving right up your arse after them. My response is always to slow down until a safe braking distance is reached, most often they do drop off, sometimes they tear past, but I'd rather have an arse of a driver tear off before me than be right behind me.

One thing I do think is often underestimated is how generally well behaved our traffic is, and how safe it is. Once you get to Paris or beyond the horn replaces the brake, a lot further and the horn is the main form of driving.

 

[detective-boy]

Add another 20-30 mph to your new maximum speed limit,so 90-100 becomes 120-130mph.

But it doesn't though. It allows for achievable enforcement of the new limit, even with the blunt instrument of cameras. Because only a small number of drivers would be exceeding it.

At the moment the speed limit is a joke and everyone knows it is a joke and there is no attempt to blanket enforce it as every other motorist (at least) would be banned within about two weeks ... the law has fallen into disrepute (as has the law on cannabis and many other drugs, but that is a different argument).

A law that is widely ignored, and which is uneforceable, is NOT a good law.