Excessive speed has been stated as a contributory factor in around 12% of UK road accidents, however but where the accident has resulted in a fatality excessive speed as a contributory factor increases to 28%.

What does this mean, it means that when excessive speed is involved in an accident, it is more likely that the accident will result in a fatality.

This are very sobering statistics. 

Speed cameras were introduced as a method to stop the speeding, to slow road users down, and improve road safety.  Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to happen.  The European Courts of Human Rights ruled that sneakily using speed cameras to catch people speeding was unfair, so signs were put up warning that cameras operated in that area, and then the cameras were painted bright yellow, just incase anyone didn’t see the signs.  Frequently, when police are having a crack down in a particular area they’ll even put a notice in the local paper.

People caught by speed cameras shout about the injustice of it, but to be honest, if they’ve published it in the paper, marked the camera on the satnavs, put up a sign and painted it yellow, any driver that gets caught by a static camera for speeding really does deserve it.  Because what they’re telling us as residents and other road users is that they know the limit, they know there is a speed camera, but they are still prepared to drive with excessive speed on the offchance that the camera’s not working.

However, many road users take an altogether different strategy, one that we will all have wittnessed.  That of driving along at a steady speed (which may be above or below the limit) and then slamming on the brakes to drive past the speed camera at a sedate 25 mph.

So, any sensible person would probably draw the conclusion that static speed cameras don’t reduce accidents, or improve driving, or even slow the traffic down.  And that was the decision taken by Swindon BC in October 2008 to remove all static cameras from the town’s roads.  Was this the right decision?

Well research by the governments own agencies suggest that static speed cameras are saving less than 25 lives per year, arguements are that putting a fake camera, or even just a photo of a camera at the same spot would have virtually the same effect.

The government has subsequently transferred the costs of maintaining static speed cameras over to the local authorities, so it seems that, in general, static cameras are falling out of favour.

But this doesn’t stop Excessive Speed being a major contributory factor to thousands of accidents each year, so what are the options.

Back in 2005, a pilot scheme was introduced in Ayrshire called the SPECS camera zone.  A stretch of the A77 that had seen 30 deaths caused by road accidents during the period 1996 to 2005 saw 40 cameras installed over 20 sections, that recorded the motorists average speed over a 32 mile stretch.

The route in question was a typical rural A road, the main trunk road between Glasgow and the ferries in Stranraer for Belfast.  In the first 2 years of this scheme 24 million vehicles moved along this stretch of road.  The section includes large & small villages, small towns, roundabouts, junctions, dual carriage way and winding narrow coastal roads.  It is a section of road where there truely are very few overtaking opportunities, and if you couple all of this with HGV’s on a 40mph maximum speed limit, you have all the ingrediants for a “killer road”.

The SPECS cameras have had a phenominal impact, the number of vehicles travelling at excessive speeds has fallen dramatically, and in 2 years only 322 speeding notices were handed out for the entire 32 mile stretch.  The number of fatalities has fallen by half, and the number of minor incidents has also fallen by 20%.

So not all speed cameras are ineffectual.

SPECS zones are now springing up all over the UK, and we hope that the the results seen in Ayrshire are replicated.  The UK road saftey office seem to have a bit of a quandry, speed does definitley kill, but unfortunately static cameras do not stop speeding.  New measures are definitely required.