Road speed limit enforcement in the United Kingdom

Road speed limit enforcement in the United Kingdom is the action taken by appropriately empowered authorities to attempt to persuade road vehicle

Vehicle

A vehicle is a device that is designed or used to transport people or cargo. Most often vehicles are manufactured, such as bicycles, cars, motorcycles, trains, ships, boats, and aircraft....

users to comply with the speed limit

Road speed limits in the United Kingdom

Road speed limits in the United Kingdom are used to define the maximum legal speed limit for road vehicles using public roads in the UK, and are one of the measures available to attempt to control traffic speeds. The speed limit in each location is indicated on a nearby traffic sign or by the...

s in force on the UK's road

Road

A road is a thoroughfare, route, or way on land between two places, which typically has been paved or otherwise improved to allow travel by some conveyance, including a horse, cart, or motor vehicle. Roads consist of one, or sometimes two, roadways each with one or more lanes and also any...

s. Methods used include those for detection and prosecution of contraventions such as roadside fixed speed cameras, average speed cameras

Automatic number plate recognition

Automatic number plate recognition is a mass surveillance method that uses optical character recognition on images to read the license plates on vehicles. They can use existing closed-circuit television or road-rule enforcement cameras, or ones specifically designed for the task...

, and police-operated LIDAR speed gun

LIDAR speed gun

A LIDAR speed gun is a device used by the police for speed limit enforcement which uses LIDAR to detect the speed of a vehicle. Unlike Radar speed guns which rely on doppler shifts to measure the speed of a vehicle these devices allow a police officer to measure the speed of an individual vehicle...

s or older radar speed guns. Vehicle activated sign

Vehicle activated sign

Vehicle activated sign is a generic term for a type of road traffic sign which displays a message conditional upon the presence, or speed, of a road vehicle. These devices are used for speed limit enforcement at some locations in the UK....

s and Community Speed Watch schemes are used to encourage compliance. Some classes of vehicles are fitted with speed limiter

Speed limiter

A speed limiter is a governor used to limit the top speed of a vehicle. For some classes of vehicle and in some jurisdictions they are a statutory requirement, for some other vehicles the manufacturer provides a non-statutary system which may be fixed or programmable by the driver.-Mopeds:Mopeds in...

s and intelligent speed adaptation

Intelligent speed adaptation

Intelligent Speed Adaptation , also known as Intelligent Speed Assistance, is any system that constantly monitors vehicle speed and the local speed limit on a road and implements an action when the vehicle is detected to be exceeding the speed limit...

is being trialled in some places on a voluntary basis.

During 2006/7 a total of 1.75 million drivers had their licenses endorsed with 3 penalty points and £114 million was raised from fines; an 'e-petition' to ban speed cameras during 2007 received 28,000 signatures. The Department for Transport estimated that cameras had led to a 22% reduction in personal injury collisions and 42% fewer people being killed or seriously injured at camera sites. The British Medical Journal
British Medical Journal
BMJ is a partially open-access peer-reviewed medical journal. Originally called the British Medical Journal, the title was officially shortened to BMJ in 1988. The journal is published by the BMJ Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Medical Association...

recently reported that speed cameras were effective at reducing accidents and injuries in their vicinity and recommended wider deployment.

In May 2010 the new Coalition government pledged to scrap public funding for speed cameras and cut the Road Safety Grant from £95 million to £57 million. Opposition politicians and some road safety campaigners claimed that lives were being put at risk. A survey conducted by The Automobile Association

The Automobile Association

The Automobile Association , a British motoring association founded in 1905 was demutualised in 1999 to become a private limited company which currently provides car insurance, driving lessons, breakdown cover, loans and motoring advice, and other services...

said that use of speed cameras was supported by 75% of their members.

Rationale

Enforcement is used to increase compliance with speed limits.

One of the main motivations for enforcement is to reduce road casualties, particularly at accident blackspot

Accident blackspot

An accident blackspot is a term used in road safety management to denote a place where road traffic accidents have historically been concentrated...

s. For 2008, "exceeding the speed limit" was reported as one of the contributory factors in 5% of all casualty collisions (14% of fatal collisions resulting in 15% of all deaths).Department for Transport (2009), p. 45 "Exceeding the speed limit was reported as a contributory factor in 5 per cent of all accidents. However, the factor became more signiﬁcant with the severity of the accident. It was reported in 14 per cent of fatal accidents and these accidents accounted for 362 fatalities, 15 per cent of all deaths"

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents

Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents is a British charity which aims to promote safety. It is particularly known for its vocal campaigns on issues of road safety, including Tufty the road crossing squirrel, the Cycling Proficiency Test and the Green Cross Code, as well as on issues of...

estimates that a pedestrian has a 90% chance of surviving being hit by a car at 20 mph, falling to 50% chance at 30 mph and to 10% at 40 mph. The government noted that the change from "mainly survivable injuries to mainly fatal injuries" takes place at speeds between 30 and 40 mph. One third of drivers thought that the chances of a pedestrian dying if hit at 40 mph was 50% or less. Parliament noted that most deaths of pedestrian occurred in urban areas (where the speed limit ranges from 20-40 mph).

Surveys have been carried out which show what the level of compliance is. A 2003 survey of drivers for the Department for Transport found that 58% break speed limits on 30 mph roads and 25% break them by more than 5 mph. 57% break speed limits on motorways and 20% break them by more than 10 mph. In 2002 the Select Committee on Transport stated that "Most drivers and pedestrians think speeds are generally too high but 95 per cent of all drivers admit to exceeding them".

Groups most likely to speed excessively are those driving in a work related capacity, members of high income households and young males. Motorcyclists also frequently speed as do HGV drivers commonly on single carriageway main roads where their speed limit is 40 mph.

Methods

There are many methods used by authorities, in places where the speed limits are not generally observed, to attempt to achieve greater compliance. These methods generally fall into one of two categories:

to attempt to identify drivers or vehicles that are breaking the speed limit for the purposes of prosecution,
to remind vehicle users what the speed limit is, and that it should be obeyed.

There are several types of speed camera in use. Speed cameras must be calibrated and certified

HOTA

HOTA is an acronym for Home Office Type Approval, a testing and certification process by the Home Office in the United Kingdom that speed cameras must pass before evidence from them can be admissible in UK courts by way of certification in accordance with Section 20 of the Road Traffic Offenders...

before the images from it are acceptable to the court, including the cameras used in police vehicles. Owners of vehicles photographed may be contacted with a 'Notice of Intended Prosecution' (NIP) requiring them to provide the name and address of the driver. If they do not provide this information they may receive a Court summons for 'Failing to Furnish Driver Details'. "Higher speeds" result in prosecution by way of a 'Conditional Offer Fixed Penalty' which can be settled by accepting a £60 fine and three penalty points. "Excessive speed offences" are automatically sent to the court.

Fixed instantaneous speed cameras

These cameras are installed beside a road and record the instantaneous speed of vehicles and a photograph of vehicles that have been identified as breaking the speed limit. There are two types commonly in use:

Gatso
Gatso
Gatso is the brand that Gatsometer BV use on their traffic enforcement cameras, most notably their speed cameras and red light cameras. The most commonly encountered Gatso speed cameras emit radar beams to measure the speed of a passing vehicle...

cameras, which take a photograph of the rear of the vehicle after the vehicle has passed,

Truvelo / D-cam
D-cam
d-cam is a new type of digital speed camera produced by the British subsidiary of South African company Truvelo Manufacturers Ltd. Currently being tested by Transport for London on the A4 Great West Road in London, the camera does not flash and can be used rear or forward-facing...

digital cameras which use infra-red to take a picture of a vehicle as it approaches, which includes an image of the driver. These cameras then transmit the image and speed to the authorities virtually instantly.

Police operated equipment

Police officer

A police officer is a warranted employee of a police force...

s can use LIDAR speed gun

LIDAR speed gun

s or sometimes the older and less accurate radar speed gun

Radar gun

A radar speed gun is a small doppler radar unit used to measure the speed of moving objects, including vehicles, pitched baseballs, runners and other moving objects. Radar speed guns may be hand-held, vehicle-mounted or static...

s to gather evidence for prosecution. These may be operated from temporary static sites or from within police vehicles.

Average speed cameras

These cameras measure average speeds over a known or measured distance. The SPECS camera system uses automatic number plate recognition

Automatic number plate recognition

(ANPR) to recognise individual vehicles at two or more different points on a route and can calculate the average speed of the vehicle between those points. The first average speed camera in Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

was installed on the A77 road

A77 road

The A77 road is a major road in Scotland. It runs in a southwesternly direction from the city of Glasgow, past the towns of Giffnock, Newton Mearns, Kilmarnock, Prestwick, Ayr, Maybole, Girvan and Stranraer to the town of Portpatrick on the Irish Sea...

in 2004.

Vehicle activated signs

Vehicle activated signs that illuminate to indicate to a driver that they are exceeding the speed limit.

Community Speed Watch

Community Speed Watch is a partnership between local people, the Police, the Fire Service and local councils. Volunteers spend a short time each week monitoring speeds and noting number plates. Those identified as speeding are sent a warning letter and the police will take further action if the same vehicle is identified as speeding three times. Junior Speed Watch works in a similar way but involves schoolchildren.

Speed limiters

Some classes of vehicles are required to have speed limiter

Speed limiter

s which enforce a maximum speed by physical means. New vehicles should be fitted with limiters as follows. Bus

Bus

A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry passengers. Buses can have a capacity as high as 300 passengers. The most common type of bus is the single-decker bus, with larger loads carried by double-decker buses and articulated buses, and smaller loads carried by midibuses and minibuses; coaches are...

es and coaches

Coach (vehicle)

A coach is a large motor vehicle, a type of bus, used for conveying passengers on excursions and on longer distance express coach scheduled transport between cities - or even between countries...

: 65 mph (105 km/h) HGV

Large Goods Vehicle

A large goods vehicle , is the European Union term for any truck with a gross combination mass of over...

s: 56 mph (90 km/h) Mopeds: 30 mph (48 km/h) Older vehicles still in use do not have limiters fitted or have them set at a higher speeds. These devices do not enforce speed limits as they do not adapt to speed limit changes.

Speed triggered traffic lights

Swindon

Swindon is a large town within the borough of Swindon and ceremonial county of Wiltshire, in South West England. It is midway between Bristol, west and Reading, east. London is east...

council is planning to install equipment on some of their traffic light systems so that they will turn to red early if a car is detected travelling above a preset speed on the approach. A Swindon councillor is reported to have said that "the whole key is to monitor driver behaviour without beating them over the head" and that "it may annoy them, but I think eventually people will work out that if they maintain a constant speed at or around the speed limit then actually their journey times will be much shorter because they won't be getting delayed by traffic lights". The RAC Foundation gave a cautious welcome to the trial. Similar systems are already in use in Spain and Portugal.

Intelligent speed adaptation

A trial of intelligent speed adaptation

Intelligent speed adaptation

is available in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. Drivers can install free software in their TomTom

TomTom

TomTom NV is a Dutch manufacturer of automotive navigation systems, including both stand-alone units and software for personal digital assistants and mobile telephones. It is the leading manufacturer of navigation systems in Europe. TomTom's customer service is located in Amsterdam, Netherlands...

GPS sat-nav units to provide a warning if they are exceeding the speed limit. In addition a 'voluntary ISA' system which uses technology installed in the vehicle which makes it difficult to accidentally accelerate beyond the speed limit is being developed. This technology is expected to be available on a voluntary basis with no current plans for vehicles to be required to be fitted with it.

Speed cameras

In 2001 the Nottingham Safety Camera Pilot achieved "virtually complete compliance" on the major ring road into the city using average speed cameras, across all Nottinghamshire SPECS installations, KSI figures have fallen by an average of 65%.

In 2003 the British Medical Journal

British Medical Journal

BMJ is a partially open-access peer-reviewed medical journal. Originally called the British Medical Journal, the title was officially shortened to BMJ in 1988. The journal is published by the BMJ Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Medical Association...

reported that speed cameras were effective at reducing accidents and injuries and recommended wider deployment. In February 2005 the British Medical Journal again reported that speed cameras were an effective intervention in reducing road traffic collisions and related casualties, noting however that most studies to date did not have satisfactory control groups. In 2003 Northumbria Police's Acting Chief Inspector of motor patrols suggested that cameras didn't reduce casualties but did raise revenue - an official statement from the police force later re-iterated that speed cameras do reduce casualties.

In December 2005 the Department for Transport published a four year report into Safety Camera Partnerships which concluded that there was a 22% reduction in personal injury collisions and 42% fewer people being killed or seriously injured following the installation of cameras. The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

reported that this research showed that the department had been previous exaggerating the safety benefits of speed cameras but that the results were still 'impressive'.

A report published by the RAC Foundation in 2010 estimated that an additional 800 more people a year could be killed or seriously injured on the UK's roads if all speed cameras were scrapped. A survey conducted by The Automobile Association

The Automobile Association

in May 2010 indicated that speed cameras were supported by 75% of their members. In 2010 Journalist Quentin Wilson writing in The Mirror said "Don’t listen to the shameless tosh coming out of safety camera partnerships" and suggested that speed cameras were "useless".

Vehicle activated signs

The MP Angela Watkinson

Angela Watkinson

Angela Eileen Watkinson is a politician in the United Kingdom. She is Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Hornchurch and Upminster, and was first elected in 2001 to the earlier seat of Upminster, beating Keith Darvill who had taken the seat from the Conservatives in 1997...

stated in parliament that vehicle activated signs were more effective than speed cameras - Department for Transport figures show that each vehicle-activated sign is estimated to prevent 3.1 accidents per year compared to 2.2 for speed cameras. Jim Fitzpatrick

Jim Fitzpatrick (politician)

James Fitzpatrick is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Poplar and Limehouse since the 2010 General Election. From 1997 to the 2010 election he was the member for Poplar and Canning Town...

the Under-Secretary of State for Transport questioned her source.

Following the decision by Portsmouth City Council to remove all their speed cameras, a councillor stated that the evidence is that vehicle activated signs are at least as effective at reducing traffic speeds as speed cameras and at one-tenth of the cost. In 2006 Transport Minister Stephen Ladyman issued a retraction accepting that VAS were indeed ten times more cost effective than cameras. http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmtran/memo_roads/memo1.pdf. The data behind this came from the Transport Research Laboratory report TRL548 from 2003, which was commissioned by the Department for Transport but was not included in their earlier figures. http://www.trl.co.uk/online_store/reports_publications/trl_reports/cat_vehicle_engineering/report_vehicle-activated_signs_-_a_large_scale_evaluation.htm

Time and distance

Before the availability of such technology the police would time drivers over a known distance to calculate their speed.

Pacing

The police would sometimes follow the target vehicle at a constant distance, and use the speed reading from their own calibrated speedometer as evidence of the speed of the vehicle being followed.

Early years

The Highway Act 1835

Highway Act 1835

Highway Act 1835 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.The Highway Act 1835 places highways under the direction of parish surveyors, and allows them to pay for the costs involved by rates levied on the occupiers of land...

allowed cart owners to be traced when it introduced the offence of 'Negligence causing damage to person or goods being conveyed on the highway', not having the owners name painted on the side of a cart, and refusing to give the owner's name.

The early Locomotive Acts between 1866 and 1896 effectively calmed

Traffic calming

Traffic calming is intended to slow or reduce motor-vehicle traffic in order to improve the living conditions for residents as well as to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists. Urban planners and traffic engineers have many strategies for traffic calming...

self-propelled traffic by requiring that a man walked in front of each vehicle with a red flag, and so the imposed speed limits of 2 mile per hour (0.89408 m/s) and 4 miles per hour (1.8 m/s) did not require enforcing.

The first person to be convicted of speeding in the UK was Walter Arnold of East Peckham

East Peckham

East Peckham is a village in Kent, England, made up of nine hamlets and situated about east of Tonbridge on the River Medway. It was the centre for the hop growing industry in Kent and is still home to the Hop Farm which has the world's largest collection of Oast Houses.-History:The Domesday entry...

, Kent, who on 28 January 1896 was fined for speeding at 8 mph (12.9 km/h), thus exceeding the contemporary speed limit of 2 mph (3.2 km/h). He was fined one shilling plus costs.

The Automobile Association

The Automobile Association

was formed in 1905 to help motorists avoid police speed trap

Speed Trap

Speed Trap is a live jazz album by Peter King, recorded at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in September 1994, and released in 1996 under the Ronnie Scotts Jazz House label...

s. In 1906 Earl Russell

Frank Russell, 2nd Earl Russell

John Francis Stanley Russell, 2nd Earl Russell known as Frank Russell, was the elder surviving son of Viscount Amberley and his wife the Honourable Katharine Stanley, and was raised by his paternal grandparents after his non-conventional parents both died young...

, an early motoring enthusiast, compared 'speed traps' to 'highway robbery' in Parliament: "Policemen are not stationed in the villages where there are people about who might be in danger, but are hidden in hedges or ditches by the side of the most open roads in the country... they are used in many counties merely as a means of extracting money from the passing traveller in a way which reminds one of the highwaymen of the Middle Ages".

In 1910 in legal test case ('Betts -v- Stevens') involving an Automobile Association patrolman and a potentially speeding motorist the Chief Justice

Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales

The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales is the head of the judiciary and President of the Courts of England and Wales. Historically, he was the second-highest judge of the Courts of England and Wales, after the Lord Chancellor, but that changed as a result of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005,...

, Lord Alverston

Richard Webster, 1st Viscount Alverstone

Richard Everard Webster, 1st Viscount Alverstone, GCMG, QC was a British barrister, politician and judge who served in many high political and judicial offices.-Background and education:...

, ruled that where a patrolman signals to a speeding driver to slow down and thereby avoid a speed trap then that person would have committed the offence of 'obstructing an officer in the course of his duty' under the Prevention of Crimes Amendment Act 1885

Prevention of Crimes Amendment Act 1885

The Prevention of Crimes Amendment Act 1885 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It became law on August 14, 1885....

. Subsequently the organisation developed a coded warning system which was used until the 1960s whereby a patrolman would always salute the driver of a passing car which showed a visible AA Badge unless there was a speed trap nearby, on the understanding that their officers could not be prosecuted for failing to salute.

All speed limits for cars and motorcycles were abolished under the Road Traffic Act 1930

Road Traffic Act 1930

The Road Traffic Act 1930 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom introduced by the then Minister of Transport Herbert Morrison following the 1929 election which resulted in a hung parliament in which the Labour party won the most seats for the first time and Ramsay MacDonald became...

because 'the existing speed limit was so universally disobeyed that its maintenance brought the law into contempt'.

Speedometers were made compulsory for new cars in 1937.

Electronic aids

By the late 1980 traffic police were being issued with Radar speed gun

Radar gun

s which enabled them to measure the speed of a vehicle more precisely.

1991-March 2007 Speed cameras

The first speed camera was installed in 1991. A camera that was installed on the M40 motorway

M40 motorway

The M40 motorway is a motorway in the British transport network that forms a major part of the connection between London and Birmingham. Part of this road forms a section of the unsigned European route E05...

and recorded 400 instances of speeding within 40 minutes. The Association of British Drivers

Association of British Drivers

The Association of British Drivers , founded in 1992, is a British motorists' advocacy group."The Association of British Drivers" is the sole operating name of "Pro-Motor", a company limited by guarantee and registered in the United Kingdom....

was formed the same year and campaigned vigorously against speed cameras.

A Statutory instrument

Statutory Instrument

A Statutory Instrument is the principal form in which delegated or secondary legislation is made in Great Britain.Statutory Instruments are governed by the Statutory Instruments Act 1946. They replaced Statutory Rules and Orders, made under the Rules Publication Act 1893, in 1948.Most delegated...

, 'The Road Traffic Offenders (Prescribed Devices) Order 1992' was approved in May 1992 coming into force 1 July 1992 allowing for unattended traffic cameras to be used for prosecution of speeding offences. The Gatsometer BV Type 24 was approved in June 1992. The LTI 20.20, a police operated LIDAR speed gun

LIDAR speed gun

received type approval in 1993.

The charity Brake

Brake (charity)

Brake is a British national road safety charity. It is based in Huddersfield.-History:Brake was formed in 1995 by Mary Williams, following the death of her mother Sue Williams in 1992. Sue Williams was killed when her stationary car was hit by a 38 ton tanker with faulty brakes...

was formed in 1995 to support traffic victims and campaign for effective enforcement of speed limits. The charity RoadPeace

RoadPeace

RoadPeace is the national charity for road crash victims in the UK. It supports the people affected by road crashes with emotional and practical support and advocacy. It operates a help line and provides practical support to people affected...

was founded in 1990 and has since actively campaigned to increase the number of speed cameras. In 1991 the government launched a major TV campaign 'Kill your speed, not a child with the budget rising from an initial £1m to £3.5m in 1997.

Research published in February 1999 showed that cameras reduce drivers' speeds markedly and were perceived to be reasonably effective. Safety Camera Partnership

Safety Camera Partnership

A Safety Camera Partnership is a local multi-agency partnership between Local Government, police authorities, HMCS, Highways Agency and the National Health Service within the United Kingdom...

s were introduced by the Department for Transport

Department for Transport

In the United Kingdom, the Department for Transport is the government department responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which are not devolved...

in December 1999 with eight initial trial areas. In 1999 income from penalties for offenses recorded by cameras was approaching £100 million.

In 1999 there was an increase in road fatalities for only the second time in 10 years (the previous time being in 1997).Department for Transport (2008), p. 106 table 2

In March 2000 the government launched a new road-safety strategy that would focus specifically on speed aiming to reduce road fatalities and serious injuries by 40%, and by 60% for children by 2010 (compared to the average of 1994-8). A similar level of 10-year casualty reduction had been consistently achieved over each of the previous eight years. Safe Speed

Safe Speed

Safe Speed is a United Kingdom based pressure group. While notionally supporting road safety the organisation primarily campaigns against speed cameras...

was founded to challenge this strategy and campaign against the crack-down on speed.

In April 2000 two motorists caught speeding and challenged the Road Traffic Act 1988 which required the keeper of a driver to identify the driver at a particular time as being in contradiction to the Human Rights Act 1998

Human Rights Act 1998

The Human Rights Act 1998 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom which received Royal Assent on 9 November 1998, and mostly came into force on 2 October 2000. Its aim is to "give further effect" in UK law to the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights...

on the grounds that it amounted to a 'compulsory confession', also that since the camera partnerships included the police, local authorities, Magistrates Courts Service (MCS) and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) which had a financial interest in the fine revenue that they would not get a fair trial. Their plea was initially granted by a judge then overturned but was the heard by the European Court of Human Rights

European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...

(ECtHR), and the European Court of Justice

European Court of Justice

The Court can sit in plenary session, as a Grand Chamber of 13 judges, or in chambers of three or five judges. Plenary sitting are now very rare, and the court mostly sits in chambers of three or five judges...

(ECJ). In 2007 the European Court of Human Rights found there was no breach of article 6 in requiring the keepers of cars caught speeding on camera to provide the name of the drive.

During 2001 the The Road Vehicles (Display of Registration Marks) Regulations 2001 Act made it illegal to alter, rearrange or misrepresent the letters or numbers on a registration plate (number plate). The Vehicles (Crime) Act 2001 introduced registration for number plate suppliers, regulate the specifications for registration plates and provided new 'Unified power for Secretary of State to fund speed cameras etc.'

The Transport Research Laboratory published a report on traffic management at major motorway road works in January 2004. Safe Speed

Safe Speed

Safe Speed is a United Kingdom based pressure group. While notionally supporting road safety the organisation primarily campaigns against speed cameras...

received a copy of the then unpublished report and claimed that it showed that fixed cameras increased the risk of injury accidents 55 per cent at road works and by 31 per cent on open motorways, also that fatal and serious crashes were 32 per cent more likely where cameras were being operated'.

The first average speed camera in Scotland

Scotland

was installed on the A77 road

A77 road

in 2004. Vehicle speeds significantly reduced immediately after the system was installed, the average being reduced by 5-6 mph and the number of drivers exceeding the speed limit by 80% or more in some areas.

In March 2005 a BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

program Inside Out

Inside Out (BBC TV series)

Inside Out is the brand name for a number of regional television programmes in England broadcast on BBC One. Each series, made by a BBC region, focuses on stories from the local area...

demonstrated how the LTI 20.20 LIDAR speed gun, of which 3,500 were in use in the UK, could create exaggerated reading. Errors came from two sources. 'Sweep errors' were as a result of the camera not measuring the distance to a fixed point on the vehicle but instead being 'swept' along the side of the vehicle. This was demonstrated by sweeping the target along a wall which was recorded as moving at 58 mph. Another way of achieving a bogus reading was where the laser reflected off a wing mirror, hit a stationary reflective object and then returned reflecting off the mirror a second time.

In July 2005 the Department for Transport blocked the installation of nearly 500 new speed cameras over concerns that partnerships have failed to consider alternatives.

A 2006 report from the Department for Transport estimated that 'exceeding the speed limit' was a fact in 12% of fatal road crashes and 5% of all casualty crashes. In the year 2006/2007 1.75 million drivers had 3 points put on their licenses and a total of £114 million of fines were issued. The 2006 AA road map controversially included the location for thousands of speed cameras - the first time such information was available in that form. A trial of number-plate displaying Vehicle activated sign

Vehicle activated sign

s in 2006 at roadworks

Roadworks

Roadworks occur when part of the road, or in rare cases, the entire road, has to be occupied for work relating to the road, most often in the case of road surface repairs...

on the M42 motorway

M42 motorway

The M42 motorway is a major road in England. The motorway runs north east from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire to just south west of Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire, passing Redditch, Solihull, the National Exhibition Centre and Tamworth on the way. The section between the M40 and M6 road forms...

resulted in half of the speeding traffic slowed down, compared to a third who responded to normal speed cameras.

As of April 2006 there were thirty eight Safety Camera Partnerships in England and Wales covering forty-one police force areas out of a total of forty-three. The Road Safety Act 2006 introduced new legislation relating to Road safety grants, the application of surplus income from safety camera enforcement and regualation relating to fixed fines. From April 2007 authorities received a 'Road Safety Grant' which was no longer related to the number of fines issued locally and was instead given directly to those Local Authorities responsible for road safety regardless or not of whether they operate traffic enforcement cameras.

During 2007 a e-petition to ban speed cameras organised by Safe Speed received 28,000 signatures.

April 2007-present

Funding for Safety Camera Partnership

Safety Camera Partnership

A Safety Camera Partnership is a local multi-agency partnership between Local Government, police authorities, HMCS, Highways Agency and the National Health Service within the United Kingdom...

changed in April 2007 and has subsequently come from Department for Transport as 'Road Safety Grants' rather than being directly linked to money raised locally from fines as it had been previously.

Swindon

Swindon

Swindon is a large town within the borough of Swindon and ceremonial county of Wiltshire, in South West England. It is midway between Bristol, west and Reading, east. London is east...

in Wiltshire switched off their 5 fixed cameras in July 2009, with the intention of replacing them with vehicle activated speed warning signs. They thus became the first local authority with no fixed cameras, although the police will continue to use their mobile speed cameras to enforce speed limits. In the nine months following the switch-off there was a small reduction in casualty rates between similar periods before and after the switch off (Before: 1 fatal, 1 serious and 13 slight accidents. Afterwards: no fatalities, 2 serious and 12 slight accidents). The journalist George Monbiot

George Monbiot

George Joshua Richard Monbiot is an English writer, known for his environmental and political activism. He lives in Machynlleth, Wales, writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain and Bring on the...

claimed that the results were not statistically significant

Statistical significance

In statistics, a result is called statistically significant if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. The phrase test of significance was coined by Ronald Fisher....

, highlighting earlier findings across the whole of Wiltshire that there had been a 33% reduction in the number of people killed and seriously injured generally and a 68% reduction at camera sites during the previous 3 years.

A report by ICM Research (an Opinion poll

Opinion poll

An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence...

research organisation) sponsored by motor insurance company LV in 2010 indicated that 1% of accidents are caused by drivers braking and then accelerating near speed cameras and that this would equates to a total of some 28,000 accidents across the country. A spokesman said that speed cameras 'impair driving ability or at the least concentration on the road'.

In May 2010 the new Coalition government said that the 'Labour's 13-year war on the motorist is over' and that the new government 'pledged to scrap public funding for speed cameras'. In July Mike Penning

Mike Penning

Michael Alan "Mike" Penning MP is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Hemel Hempstead and is a junior Transport minister.-Early life and career:...

, the Road safety minister reduced the Road Safety Grant for the current year to Local Authorities from £95 million to £57 million saying that local authorities had relied too heavily on safety cameras for far too long and that he was pleased that some councils were now focusing on other road safety measures. It is estimated that the as a result the Treasury is now distributing £40 million less in Road Safety Grant than is raised from fines in the year. The cuts include a 27% to the revenue grant used for camera maintenance and education programs and 100% to the capital grant used for road safety measures such as the installation of fixed cameras, speed humps and pedestrian crossings. Brake warned that by removing ring-fencing the cuts could in reality be larger. Penning later said "road safety grant was reduced as this grant was spread evenly across all local authorities, not because this was considered an area of lower priority spending."

In June 2010 it was announced that 9 of Somerset's 26 fixed speed cameras were to be switched off.

In July 2010, the BBC announced that the Devon and Cornwall Safety Camera Partnership was to be wound up, and that no speed camera would be operated in the South West from the following year unless funding was provided by the government. Also in July 2010 one-fifth of the speed cameras in Northamptonshire were switched-off - the council would not reveal which of its 42 cameras remained active, and others announced plans to review camera provision. and a total of four other counties; Buckinghamshire, Lancashire, Dorset and Essex announced plans to turn off some or all of their cameras;

All the Oxfordshire speed cameras were switched off on 1 August 2010. Later in August an Oxford Mail report challenged a claim by Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership that speed offences had increased since the switch-off, stating that they have received data showing that speed offences actually fell by 4 per-cent when compared the figures since the switch-off to those of 2008-9. In September, Oxfordshire's Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership reported that the number of drivers speeding past the county's deactivated speed cameras had increased by up to 88%. Following lobbying by road safety groups and by local residents it was announced in November that they would be reinstated. The Oxfordshire cameras were switched back on in April 2011 after a new source of funding was found for them. Following rule changes on the threshold for offering "Speed Awareness Courses" as an alternative to a fine and licence points for drivers, and given that the compulsory fees charged for such courses go directly to the partnerships rather than directly to central government as for the fine revenues, the partnership will be able to fund their operations from course fees. Compared with the same period in the previous year with the cameras still switched on, the number of serious injuries that occurred during the same period with the cameras switched off was exactly the same - at 13 - and the number of slight injuries was 15 more at 70, resulting from 62 crashes - 2 more than when the cameras were still operating. There were no fatalities during either period.

Also in August Gloucestershire cancelled plans to update cameras and has reduced or cancelled maintenance contracts

In July 2010, some opposition politicians and some road safety campaigners claimed that lives were being put at risk by the removal of speed cameras. The AA agreed saying adding that cameras were supported by the majority of motorists.

In October 2010 Wiltshire switched of its remaining speed cameras, both fixed and mobile. Speed limit enforcement will continue to be provided in the county by Wiltshire's traffic police and Community Speed Watch.

In December 2010, Portsmouth City Council decided to end its membership of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Road Safety Partnership, and to remove all its speed cameras.

Rationale

Methods

Fixed instantaneous speed cameras

Police operated equipment

Average speed cameras

Vehicle activated signs

Community Speed Watch

Speed limiters

Speed triggered traffic lights

Intelligent speed adaptation

Speed cameras

Vehicle activated signs

Time and distance

Pacing

Early years

Electronic aids

1991-March 2007 Speed cameras

April 2007-present

Further reading