Why speed cameras suck
Jul. 21st, 2005 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueI dislike speed cameras.
Leaving aside the obvious 'that I got tagged by one', the reasons are these:
* They perpetuate the myth that there's some mystical threshold, at which going faster you suddenly become 'dangerous'. Speed appropriate to conditions. Repeat after me. Speed appropriate to conditions.
* Watching your speedometer because there's a camera coming up means you're not paying attention to the road.
* A few miles an hour over the limit is less dangerous than stamping on the brakes to avoid getting a ticket.
* Automatic tickets transfer the burden of proof onto the hapless motorist. It's an automatic process that on numerous occasions seems to lack basic sanity checking. Guilting until proven innocent is not one of the tenets of our legal system.
* In March, I was assaulted, had a leg broken, and a ligament torn. I'm still not walking especially well. Made a statement, but they 'exhausted their avenues of enquiry'. Is it hard to see how I'm bitter that now some one is making my life complicated by issuing a ticket for doing 48 miles an hour, along a road that until a couple of months ago had a 60 mile an hour limit?
I appreciate that the skills required to investigate an assault case are not the same as the skills require to stick a notice of intended prosecution in an envelope, but somehow it offends me that more effort seems to have gone in to extorting £60 from me than in doing anything at all about the fact that I've had to put up with 6 weeks in a cast, and am still not entirely mobile.
Leaving aside the obvious 'that I got tagged by one', the reasons are these:
* They perpetuate the myth that there's some mystical threshold, at which going faster you suddenly become 'dangerous'. Speed appropriate to conditions. Repeat after me. Speed appropriate to conditions.
* Watching your speedometer because there's a camera coming up means you're not paying attention to the road.
* A few miles an hour over the limit is less dangerous than stamping on the brakes to avoid getting a ticket.
* Automatic tickets transfer the burden of proof onto the hapless motorist. It's an automatic process that on numerous occasions seems to lack basic sanity checking. Guilting until proven innocent is not one of the tenets of our legal system.
* In March, I was assaulted, had a leg broken, and a ligament torn. I'm still not walking especially well. Made a statement, but they 'exhausted their avenues of enquiry'. Is it hard to see how I'm bitter that now some one is making my life complicated by issuing a ticket for doing 48 miles an hour, along a road that until a couple of months ago had a 60 mile an hour limit?
I appreciate that the skills required to investigate an assault case are not the same as the skills require to stick a notice of intended prosecution in an envelope, but somehow it offends me that more effort seems to have gone in to extorting £60 from me than in doing anything at all about the fact that I've had to put up with 6 weeks in a cast, and am still not entirely mobile.
speeding
Date: 2005-07-21 08:30 pm (UTC)I was in a car park near here. Just leaving, and doing about 20mph. A young child (about 4) ran through the cars and nearly ended under my front wheels, the responsible!!!! adult was clearly not controlling him/her. If I had been doing 21mph, we would have contacted. If I had been doing 25mph, I would have well past the area where we would have contacted!!
Also there is a legal requirement that speed (revenue) cameras can only be erected when there have been 3 fatal accidents on the stretch of road.
I do wonder, however, once they are in place, the accident rate will reduce, so when is the situation revisted to see if that stretch of raod is STILL dangerous
bob6pp