Watching the watchers

In the olden days driving used to be simple. You’d have a man walking at the front of the car with a bright red flag to warn pedestrians that a car was coming and they’d move out the way. Today you could strap half of Halford’s national stock of halogen lamps to the front and pedestrians would still walk out into the road in front of you. But it’s okay, because speed ‘safety’ cameras are making Britain’s roads a safer place.

Last year British motorists payed £121m in fixed penalty notices. You could bribe South African officials into buying your company’s jet aircraft for that kind of money. You could build two more Welsh parliaments. You could buy 2 Eurofighter jets and still have money left over for fuel and winegums. Or buy a house in the home counties.

Today the Avon and Somerset Safety Camera Partnership asked the government for £100k to pay for more cameras. Not the speeding variety, but CCTV cameras. It appears that they’re fed up of people vandalising their cameras, and now want to put up cameras to protect the cameras.

Can you see a problem with this?

Say you’ve gone out with your mates. You’ve got a balaclava on, or maybe uncle Fred’s motorcycle helmet, and you’re tooled up to wreck a speed camera. How likely is it that you’re going to be put off by the fact somebody’s gone and put up a second camera pointing at the first one? I think it’s more than likely that matey-boy’s going to see this as an amazing b.o.g.o.f vandalism treat from the tax-payer.

It’s amazing given the amount of effort put into catching beelzebub’s proteges speeding motorists, that there haven’t been more publicity campaigns. ROSPA’s website illustrates that out of 34 road safety campaigns between 1963 and 2003, only 7 have focussed on speed. That means that 27 have been about drink driving or wearing a seat belt. Speed wasn’t thought about until 1993.

The ironic thing is that speeding motorists are contributing to road safety, just not in the way you’d expect. Speeding fines are going to the treasury, not road safety campaigns. However, as a cyclist I will avoid going on roads where speeding motorists are. That means I’m less likely to get run over, and the whole thing has made the road statistically safer. It’s not just me. In slower traffic pedestrians seem to think they have Batfink’s wings that were ‘like a shield of steel’. They just walk out. Employ some 17 year old loon who’d otherwise be working in B&Q to drive up and down that road at 36mph all day and I promise you they’ll think twice about when they step off the curb.

I have no doubt speed kills. It kills outside schools, shopping centres, residential areas. But when was the last time you saw a camera or camera van in one of those places?

There’s a whole host of speed-killing measures talked about at the moment. London is installing cameras in pairs so that you get a picture both front and rear of the car – fantastic if you’re thinknig of selling you car in the Friday Ads or Autotrader. Other cities are thinking of taking away curbs so that pedestrians and cars are on the same level.

Here’s an idea. Take that money and spend it on road safety. Show children videos of people having near-misses by stepping off the curb without thinking. Put a plasma tv at accident blackspots to show pedestrians in technicolour glory what happens if they step out into the road assuming a car will stop for them. Put up signs along cycle routes saying “don’t even think about going down this road”. Employ a traffic policeman or two to pull over those Mondeo and Mercedes drivers who insist on driving in the middle lane of the motorway at 56mph just in case they manage to catch up with some slower car before they have to turn off in 79 miles. Deal with the cause of road accidents, not just trying to lessen the consequences of when they do happen.

The thing is, I think I’ve found the motivation behind all of this. What’s the worse Matey-boy is likely to get for defacing the safety camera? The prisons are full. I suspect he’ll get a second £60 fixed penalty for vandalism or criminal damage, doubling the revenue each camera can take.