Adrian F

In Essex where speed camera's rule road deaths have just risen by 25%!!!

And with millions of people being prosecuted for safely breaking the limits each year surely even idiots can realise that breaking the speed limit is only in very rare cases dangerous in fact how many crashes by speeding motorists have been caught by Gatso photo's as a percentage of total caught? I bet a minuet fraction.

In Essex the coppers manning the mobile camera vans are on overtime therefore the Tax's raised from speeding fines are filling the Traffic cops over time budget motivating them to catch more and more motorists and ignoring offences which take them away from the speed trap e.g. Dangerous driving for which convictions I believe have plummeted?

The whole thing is about money and how can any body denie this when convictions in Essex alone rose from 4000 a year to about 80,000! a year when the Police got a SHARE of the profit, this was of course then passed on to the Police men in more over time. They of course could turn this down if they felt it was morally wrong and not justifiable. I wonder how many did?

And finally many current 40 limits were 60 limits and the roads were safe but non profitable at a 60 limit so the Partnership to raise more revenue have had the limit lowered and then put in some form of trap this also happens in Essex.

This topic keeps being raised because people are upset by it and want to voice their feelings if it is suppressed then we don’t live in a democracy do we. We as the Tax payers are being ignored by the Police whose wages WE pay and we are very aggrieved may be if they focused on the crimes which the majority of the people rate as important they would find less complaints and more support.

hedgehog

Someone in this thread mentioned Durham and how their figures were following the general trend. The reason Durham is important is that their CC, Paul Garvin, rejects cameras as a means of traffic policing, thereby proving that the police are not all bad and that they do have their own minds. His focus is on education.

In truth, however, Durham's figures do not follow the general trend. Last year they issued 32% FEWER speeding tickets than in the previous year, while the general trend is for huge increases in the numbers of tickets being issued. More telling is the fact that Durham has 35% fewer accidents (per vehicle mile) than the national average and 43% fewer casulties.

While some short sighted members of the police force may be happy to sit in the back of a van collecting taxes by photographing motorists the more alert officers will see the writing on the wall. I believe that Kent (might be the wrong county, not good with counties) no longer have any dedicated traffic police. Anyone on this group with a particular ethical opposition to the police would, therefore, support the cameras as each one does away with more police jobs.

A study in the US recently demonstrated, for one particular city, that their dedicated traffic police caught more people involved in non-traffic crimes than did their "normal" police patrols who outnumbered the traffic officers. So, again, you might argue that police should stop attacking motorists and get on with catching real criminals but, in truth, traffic police can be shown to be very useful at catching real criminals.

My position is that it is reasonable to put pressure on the police forces as in many areas, as Durham have shown, decisons taken by the CC in relation to traffic policing are killing people. It is useful to apply this pressure from many angles and it is useful to discuss it with police officers both to make the views of the public known and in the hope of winning them over. However, just because your company did something stupid last year doesn't necessarily make you a bad person and while there is no doubt that there are problems in the police there are also people doing their best to make a living and get the job done.