Taxi Driver Online

Hoon Wrong about Average Speed Cameras


Reports over the weekend suggested that Geoff Hoon is considering widespread replacement of fixed speed cameras with average speed ones, measuring speed over a long distance.


He claims that he understands why people dislike fixed cameras and that average speed cameras are "fairer, and encourage safe driving", but we say they are just bigger, nastier bullies and will utterly destroy safe driving in the long term.

"Fixed cameras had some logic behind them, in that they could be used in specific accident blackspots (like dangerous junctions) to make dozy drivers think about what they were doing," said the ABD's Nigel Humphries. "But average speed cameras will just make drivers switch off their brains and turn them into cruise control missiles - only a government that has given up on accident prevention and thinks that making people crash at the speed limit is the way forwards could support them."

The reason the ABD has been so critical of fixed cameras is that they have been badly misused, to the extent that their effect on road safety had actually been counter-productive. Reasons for this include:

· Cameras are seen as a panacea, so have been used instead of the correct safety solutions


· Many cameras are placed on roads with limits that are too low and are therefore mostly penalizing safe behaviour


· Camera partnerships have used them to raise revenue and the public inevitably sees a cynical motive in this


· The criteria for cameras to be used do not require the accidents to be speed related


· Public disapproval of cameras has led to drivers being unreceptive to all safety messages


· The need to justify unpopular cameras has led to the real causes of crashes being covered up


· Cameras distract drivers from the task of observing the road for genuine hazards, especially in urban areas


· The widespread use of cameras underpins the false safety message that speed setting by numbers is important and so undermines the ability of drivers to recognise and respond correctly to hazards such as children running out.

Average speed cameras do all of these things to a much more pernicious extent than fixed cameras. Their only positive is that they reduce the incidence of sudden braking caused by the misuse of fixed cameras on roads like the A14 in Cambridgeshire and in motorway roadworks, which has actually been shown to increase accidents!

"Overall, average speed cameras are a terrible nightmare for motorists, who hate travelling on roads equipped with them," concludes Humphries. "They are the ultimate embodiment of the late Auberon Waugh's great quotation that "speed cameras are fatuous instruments of oppression designed to exercise power for its own sake and impose subservience" and their use should be confined to motorway roadworks where they have a marginal benefit and do little harm."

If Hoon thinks these devices will be popular he is living on another planet.

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

If I received an FPN for speeding in a TX2, I think I'd frame it.

They do about 0-60 in 7 minutes.

They do 60?

CC

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Down hill with a tail wind

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http://wingsoverscotland.com/ http://www.newsnetscotland.com/

If they really want speed limits adhered to why dont they just Govern all cars to 60 MPH and be done with it...Why dont they???.... Because they like Speeders and the revenue they bring in thats why, its Bugger all to do with road safety but about raising money..

Im pleased that Hoon and his Numptie mates have made their Views clear on this Mass invasion of Drivers privacy before the next general election...it will be yet another reason for Millions of the dissilusioned electorate to put their X in Different box at the Next General election....

regarding speed camera`s, can I claim some sort of record?
From the Tower of London to my house,is 13 miles.
I have to pass (slowly) 11 gatso`s.Is this a record?
Disregarding motorways,etc. can anyone beat this?

Do they all contain a Camera or do they rotate a couple of Cameras around the Boxes?

Yes all have camera`s and all are fully armed and loaded.

Jeeze thats sad..yet so symptomatic of what ails this country and makes us all feel sick to the stomach because they treat us like dogs trained to heel.

Considering that a high percentage of speeders are caught in 30mph and 40mph limits I cannot see how that would help.

no..but it would cure the issue in a sixty zone....anyway, im sure that with GPS they if they had a will they could regulate your maximum speed with some clever under the bonnet technology to fit the speed limit where ever you happen to be.....It'll happen if the Nulab safety Quangoes want it to happen...

TBH I would much rather have average speed cameras everywhere instead of bloody speed bumps!

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stressed controller!!!

I wondered who it was following me!

One of the cameras is in the Limehouse Tunnel and is an 'average speed' camera.
The world's most expensive stretch of road (£230,000 per metre when it opened in the 1990s) and the speed limit is 30mph.

One way road users pay for 'infrastructure improvements'...

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Charlton's lost past http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsFKWGlrze0
London's future? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... rants.html

I have some news for you Captain Taxi.

None of the cameras in the Limehouse Link are 'specs' (average speed) cameras, instead they were the first digital cameras to be used in London, as in they download the image straight to Marlowe House in Sidcup.

Rumours took over, and suddenly they became average speed cameras.

So, like all other roadside cameras, you're safe as long as you pass them at 30mph, your speed in between each camera is irrelevant.

Average speed cameras are like the ones on Upper Thames Street from Fish Street Hill to Southwark Bridge. They look like a small pair of specs, hence the name.