Swindon Council give speed cameras the boot

North Somerset Council the local authority who govern the town of Swindon have decided to pull their funding out of the local safety camera partnership. At present they contribute £400,000 to the scheme which operates a number of fixed and mobile speed traps in the city. They have decided that the money would be better spent on more effective road safety measures.

The Conservative council have upset members of the Labour party at Westminster by announcing that the cameras are nothing more than a revenue raising tool for the Government. Since coming to power Labour have developed something of an obsession with the speed of vehicles and Britains roads have been revolutionized by 1000s of cameras all over the place. Well, not quite all over the place. As yet most people are yet to actually see one outside a school or on a narrow dangerous road.

Critics of the council have set up a little group called ‘hands off our speed cameras’ in an attempt to drum up support for the speed cameras. Some going as far to suggest that the council will have blood on their hands if they remove the cameras. At a time when labour have instructed judges to hand down longer prison terms for drivers who kill and injure on our roads this does seem a little odd. Why sentence the drivers at all when we should be bringing councils into court for not putting up a speed camera?

The announcement by the council has come as something of a welcome shock to genuine road safety campaigners who have been discredited in the past for pointing out the lack of effectiveness of speed cameras. The Government have been known to suggest outlandish figures on the lowering of death rates by cameras. It’s important to note that their figures relate to ‘camera sites’ and not all stretches of road. If there are two accidents on a 50 meter stretch of road in 2003, a camera goes up in 2004 and just one person is killed in 2005 they boast a massive 50% reduction in deaths for that location.

Experts are aware that road death statistics on a stretch of road can be very random indeed, sometimes a year that ends in three deaths can be followed by 4 years of no deaths. It’s therefore easy to see how the figures can be spun to suggest that cameras do work.

The council plans to make a final decision by September of this year, lets hope they are the first of many councils to abandon this unnecessary stealth tax on the motorist.

Filed under: The Politics of Motoring, Traffic enforcement