HIDING SPEED CAMERAS IS DANGEROUS SAYS SAFE SPEED
19 February 2006 - Safe Speed

The Times reports that from April 2007 camera partnerships may be ableto hide their cameras [1].

This follows recent news that no system of public accountability exists [2], and that one partnership is cheating the public with grossly misleading information [3].

In December 2005 the Department for Transport (DfT) announced new funding
plans for camera partnerships with a annual ''road safety grant'' of £120m.

Safe Speed believes that hiding cameras would be considerably more dangerous
for the following reasons:

1) Drivers would spend even more time looking out for hard-to-spot cameras and
will have less time available to observe the road ahead.

2) If cameras were hidden they would be even less effective in their primary
stated role of reducing vehicle speeds at accident black spots.

3) Drivers believe that hidden cameras are ''sneaky''. Hiding them again would
accelerate the serious ongoing damage to the Police / public relationship. And
it would further damage confidence in official road safety messages.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: ''We''ve seen such frightful behaviour from camera
partnerships over the past couple of years, and we were sure that the new
funding rules were the DfT''s way of taking control - via the purse strings.''

''Hiding the cameras would be another nail in the coffin of the UK''s superior
safe driving culture - DfT may not understand the damage, but we do. It''s our
safe driving culture that gave us the safest roads in the world, long before
there were any speed cameras.''

''Scrapping all the cameras is presently the most important and most effective
road safety intervention available to government.''

www.safespeed.org.uk

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