Category Archives: Speed Cameras

Mayor’s Transport Budget

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When you wish to see what is happening in London, and what the priorities for transport will be in future, one of the key documents to look at is the Mayor of London’s Transport Budget. His new budget for 2016/2017 has just been published. Here are a few comments on it:

Improving bus journey reliability is a key objective. But guess what, bus journey times have been negatively impacted by the “Road Modernisation Plan” (which includes on-going “improvements” to a number of major road junctions and lots of cycle lanes which have removed road space). As a result “bus mitigation schemes” are required. What does that mean? Probably a lot more bus lanes in essence.

The Road Modernisation Plan is actually costing £4 billion although some of that will apparently go on improving or maintaining existing assets – such as strengthening the Hammersmith Flyover and upgrading the Fore Street tunnel. It will also include “transformational” projects to replace the Wandsworth town centre gyratory, the Vauxhall Cross Gyratory, and projects for the Euston Road, King’s Cross, Highbury Corner and Croydon Fiveways.

For cycling projects there will be £913 million spent through to 2021/2022 which includes the Cycle Superhighways, a number of “Quietways” (cycle routes on minor roads) and numerous smaller projects.

Money will be spent on replacing obsolete wet film speed cameras by digital cameras (amount to be spent not declared), on financing 20 mph schemes, and a trial of “mandatory Intelligent Speed Assistance” (note the rebranding from the former “Intelligent Speed Adaptation”!).

You can see the real priorities by looking at the proposed split of the capital expenditure budget for 2016/2017. This is £1,673m (47%) on Rail and Underground, £1,299m (36%) on Crossrail, £435m (12%) on Surface Transport, with the balance of 5% on “Corporate” (the latter includes commercial development and ticketing projects). In other words, the road network is yet again to be starved of funding in comparison with rail/underground projects despite the road network being used for many more journeys (counting bus trips, private cars, cycling, etc). Indeed if you consider the expenditure on cycling and buses alone, there is surely not much left for other improvements to the road network.

So now you know where the money goes.

Roger Lawson

Police Forces Bending Rules for Profit

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We have issued the following press release:

“As Chancellor George Osbourne cancels plans to cut police funding we call upon Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner Olly Martins to immediately withdraw threats to make up the police budget by using zero tolerance enforcement of the 70mph motorway limit.  PCC Martins planned to use cameras intended to enforce variable limits at times of congestion, switching them on at 70MPH and using the increased profits (over and above the profits his force already make from speed cameras) to make up the shortfall in funding. We call on the government to urgently enshrine in law National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC – formerly ACPO) guidelines that a tolerance of 10%+ 2mph be applied to all speed enforcement and for police to be banned from misusing variable limit cameras intended only to reduce congestion on motorways to enforce the 70mph limit.”

Note that the corruption of the police force by drivers paying to avoid prosecution has been covered in our past newsletters and the legal issues associated with this practice are being actively examined.

Roger Lawson

Prolific Speed Cameras

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A recent media report states that a speed camera in the Limehouse Link tunnel in East London issues the most speeding tickets in the country – on average about 50 per day. That’s 17,620 tickets in 2014-15.

There is one camera in the tunnel westbound, although it is moved around between three different locations within the tunnel (this is not an average speed camera system along the tunnel but a conventional gatso type). Often the active camera is near the westbound entrance, where the road slopes down into the tunnel and hence vehicles have a tendency to speed up and where they are just coming out of a 40 mph limit area. With a speed limit of 30 mph, the cameras being both invisible and poorly signed, you can see why they are so productive.

This writer looked at the accidents in the tunnel soon after it was built and when speed cameras were first installed. This is what I said back in 2003: “Why was this done? At first glance on the reasonable grounds that there have been a number of serious accidents on this stretch of road, including two fatalities, although there is no evidence that they were speed related (your editor has studied the police STATS19 reports on the accidents).

In fact there is a major design defect in this tunnel. It has a “pavement” at each side with a kerb that is several inches high, unlike most tunnels. Many of the accidents appear to be caused because people hit the kerb and are deflected into other traffic, or in the case of motorcyclists who seem to experience particular difficulties, are ejected from their bikes into the path of other traffic. The problem is that because of the poor lighting in the tunnel, and the fact that the kerb and pavement are a uniform monochrome grey that matches the surface of the road, drivers simply cannot see them. They therefore tend to follow the more brightly lit sides of the tunnel and run into the kerbs.

Comment: A few pounds worth of paint to highlight the kerb would have solved almost all the accident problems but instead we have the dogmatic approach of installing expensive speed cameras, and fining motorists, for no good reason.”

Needless to point out that my representations on this subject to the head of road safety at TfL fell on deaf ears.

Roger Lawson

20 Mph Enforcement in Islington

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Islington now has a 20 m.p.h. limit on all roads under its control.  This now includes all main roads (formerly it was just residential ones) but excluding Tfl controlled ones like the A1 Holloway Road.  This is perceived by most residents to be nothing more than anti-car gesture politics on the part of Islington council.

This borough-wide restriction has now been in force for about a year or so.  The police have said it is an unnaturally slow speed on main roads and they have not got the time or resources to enforce it.  According to one local resident, on the main roads it is widely disregarded, not just by private motorists, but by buses, police cars not on response calls, council vehicles etc.  However, the police have recently been pushed into giving this Islington council policy some teeth, namely by the one Green councillor.

They are now setting up the odd speed trap with hand-held radar guns. One person was caught doing 27 m.p.h. on her way into work, incurring a £100 fine and three points on her licence.  This was on a bus route, and it’s worth noting that the speed trap was set up near a bus stop, so speeding buses would be slowing down on its approach and the police would therefore not have to pull them in.

Comment: It is often claimed by the advocates of wide-area 20 mph schemes that it will have little practical impact on residents and the police would be unlikely to enforce an unreasonable limit, partly because the technology has not been certified to do so and partly because they do not have the resources. The experience in Islington just shows that this is not the case. If a 20-mph limit is introduced you will in due course be forced to adhere to it, whether it is reasonable for the road conditions or not.

Roger Lawson

More speed cameras, and more fines

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The Daily Telegraph ran a front page article on 27th December in which this writer was quoted. The article reported on the increase in the number of speeding fines issued by the courts in England and Wales in 2013 (the latest year for which figures are available). There were particularly sharp rises in areas such as Essex (up 44%) and Avon/Somerset (up 34%). These fines go to the Treasury and £45 million was generated as a result, but those figures do not include those who pay a fixed penalty notice or accept an education course (which they also have to pay for of course).

What are the reasons for the increases?  It seems very unlikely that it arises from more drivers exceeding the speed limit on the ever more congested roads. The main causes are probably the switch from old fashioned Gatso type devices with film cameras to digital cameras which never run out of film and where the processing can be automated, plus the increased use of speed awareness education courses. The police get a kick-back from the course operators and hence have a financial interest in generating more potential prosecutions. We have reported in our past newsletters on this perversion of justice where the police are financially motivated to waive prosecutions, but the Government and senior police officers see nothing wrong in this morally dubious practice. If this happened with any other “crime” the police concerned would be prosecuted.

In addition the number of active speed cameras has been increasing with rising numbers of average speed cameras. For example, London is committed to putting them on many of the main arterial routes into the centre of London to replicate those already on the A13.

Note that there are proposals afoot to increase the levels of fines imposed by magistrates courts so the level of fines collected by the Treasury may triple. For example the maximum fine for speeding on a motorway may rise to £10,000.

In London the justification for installing more average speed cameras (in a report dated 17 October 2013) was that “speed related collisions are a serious problem on London’s roads and account for 46 percent of all KSIs in London over the last three years”. This is a truly astonishing claim and cannot be reconciled to the national figures reported by the DfT which are much lower (only 25% of fatal collisions have a speed related factor and not necessarily where speed exceeded the posted speed limit). They also claim KSIs are reduced by 57% where cameras are installed which ignores all the other factors that have reduced accidents in recent years, and the impact of regression to the mean. Indeed it’s worth pointing out that when the City of London were arguing for their new 20-mph speed limit they said that “speed is not recorded as a factor for most of the collisions within the City…..”.

One has to conclude if one has examined the evidence in detail that any benefit from speed cameras is dubious which is why I said to the Telegraph reporter that “It is in the Government’s interests to encourage the issuing of fines; they are effectively a cash cow”. This is not about justice or accident prevention. It’s about those with little real understanding of road safety wishing to inhibit and control road users as part of a wider agenda. In terms of cost/benefit there are lots more effective ways to improve road safety than speed cameras. There is more information on these topics on our web site at http://www.freedomfordrivers.org.

Roger Lawson 1/1/2015

No End To, Rather An Intensification of the War on the Motorist

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Drivers had been promised no re-emergence of moves to impose road user charging under the current administration. But by stealth, buried in the bowels of the Infrastructure Bill (currently making its way through Parliament) are measures which: (a) facilitate the privatisation the Highways Agency, and (b) pave the way for the sell-off of the UK road network to private interests, and the subsequent imposition of road user charging.

The threat of a mandatory imposition (by EU diktat) of the fitment of Black Boxes remains. Big Brother external control and monitoring of your driving.

The Government is active in supporting Driverless Car technology: the ultimate extension of external control – you become a passenger in your own vehicle – but still responsible for it if the technology fouls up! (Even Toyota have distanced themselves from this particular piece of crass idiocy).

The much-publicised Motorway Speed Limit increase has been quietly ditched – another example of a commitment made but retracted. A raft of major road speed limit reductions were being propose, ostensibly due to EU clean air diktats; when it was government itself that retarded the decline in emissions: by (a) discouraging catalysed petrol vehicle sales in favour of lower CO2-, but higher NOx-, SO2- and particulate-producing diesel; and (of much greater significance), by (b) persistently failing to regulate adequately the emissions of the worst polluters: public service, and older goods vehicles. Modern private diesel cars have very low emissions – particularly those with DPFs (Diesel Particulate Filters).

Speed Camera Partnerships effectively remain totally unregulated. This is despite incontrovertible evidence that the casualty-reducing benefits claimed for their “electronic highwaymen” prove to be non-existent after Regression To The Mean is taken into account. Of course, turkeys would never vote for Christmas; and instead of seeking reductions in prosecution numbers by lobbying for sensibly-set speed limits, the Partnerships have now switched focus to try to divert as many drivers as possible away from accepting fixed penalties and onto “Speed Awareness” courses – from which both the Partnership and the course organisers each take a tasty rake-off. The Shakespearean words: “Rotten”, “State” and “Denmark” come to mind…….

Ill-informed local politicians are promoting the proliferation of 20mph limit zones (with a few notable exceptions like Worthing – due to overwhelming public opposition ). This is despite the road safety evidence being damningly negative; with deaths and serious injuries consistently being worse than those in comparable nearby areas where 30mph has been retained.

All these developments have to be countered at both local and national levels if we are to prevent things getting markedly worse for drivers than is already the case. You can help by joining in and making your voice, views and opinions heard.