Why Not Stick Up Your Own Home Made Bird House As The Local Gatso? (Speed Cameras and Speed Limits)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Speed Cameras and Speed Limits
Date:	04/10/04 (583 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Slowwwwwwww down...

Disadvantages: ...Folks

D’yer know, I’ve never been caught by a speed camera. Well, at least one of those predominantly yellow coloured boxes that hang out from the side of a street or a main drag. Of course, I have been done for speeding (shame on me) although those points expired some time ago as the offences took place way back in 1998 (only 2 incidents before your mind goes racing!). Both of those times, it was a man standing with what looked like a ray gun in his hand nabbing me for exceeding the limit and duly getting me fined with a total of 6 penalty points on me license *sigh*

So am I a good driver because of my reasonably clean record or simply lucky? Probably the latter to be honest although I would add that I am acutely aware of the dreaded cameras. In fact, the A605 on the way to Peterborough is a red route with plenty of wee cameras along the way. Whilst it is mainly single track and difficult to get above 40 to 50 miles an hour, the police are taking little chance it seems with cameras posted every few miles. Saying that, I do like the new signs that seem to be springing up everywhere which illuminate with the speed limit by using sensors as your car approaches. This is a civilised way to draw the drivers attention to the fact that they need to slow down without booking them every time they exceed the local limit by more than the 10% margin that most police forces use (not all cameras have film in them and those that do cost a fortune by virtue of the cost of replacement film)

The existence of the infamous Gatso has stirred much debate over the last few years. As a matter of fact, I have recently employed a young girl who worked in the fines office for one of the counties. She got so tired of the abuse from drivers that she took a pay-cut to come and work for me. It seems nobody feels that they are guilty until a big, blown up shot of their ugly mug is thrust in front of them with the speed that the offender was doing shown on the snap. Even then, most still deny it. So friend or foe? Well their unpopularity is not in doubt. The fact that the relationship between motorists and the police has declined rapidly over recent times is hard to miss. What with overcrowded roads and motorways, congestion charges, road taxes and endless traffic jams, the lot of the erstwhile driver seems gloomy. With the number of jams that occur, it’s hard to believe that anyone manages to break the limit but they do.

This debate was thrown into even greater focus for me at the weekend. Whilst perusing the ST, I encountered an article about home made Gatso cameras that made fascinating reading. It appears that while the counties start to shy away from speed cameras, local people are starting to erect their own devices to stop folks from speeding down their particular neck of the woods. The individual at the heart of this latest development is a guy called Ray Allott, a 38-year-old engineer from North Yorkshire. Fed up with drivers blasting past his house at up to 80 miles an hour, he has made and erected his own speed camera and stuck it at the side of the road. The road between Harrogate and Knaresborough now has it’s own home-made camera although it is conspicuous by it’s presence as North Yorkshire is one of the few areas that does not use fixed speed cameras. However, the evidence captured by the camera is inadmissible in a court of law as it has not been approved by the Home Office. Unperturbed, Mr Allott passes the evidence to the police for them to deal with the miscreants as appropriate. The article goes on to say that Mr Allott is applying for Home Office certification so that the shots can be used formally whilst those wishing to follow suit can buy a camera from him for between £650 to £8000 depending on the type required (go to www.speedcamera.biz if interested!)

A bit like Alice through the Looking Glass, this piece became curiouser and curiouser as I stumbled across people apparently painting cardboard boxes to look like Gatsos whilst one bright spark in Birmingham has painted his/her bird house yellow and grey to disguise it as a speed camera (go to www.speedcam.co.uk for some illuminating fakes). The coup de gras was the notion that villagers in Somerset now have their own speed guns given to them by the police allowing them to mount their own community patrols. All of this left me thinking that the general hatred of speed cameras appears to be on the turn as more and more of the public try to take the law into their own hands.

Along with the presence of cameras comes the inevitable system of fines. The Government have recently proposed a different approach to speeding fines as more middle class workers get snared for a fifth time, exceeding their allowed quota of points and thus incurring a ban. Needless to say that this can cause great hardship and with the margin for error so fine, the latest idea is that the points penalties are geared towards the severity of the misdemeanour i.e. the more over the limit you are, the higher the number of points you get. I can’t see that in the grand scheme of things that this will prove that different but who knows. Alternatively, more minor speeding offences may mean the offender is asked to undertake a mini-driving school rather than incur points on his/her license. This very thing happened to one of my friends last year although he didn’t appear to take it altogether seriously telling me he’d been as good as gold over the 2 days only to return to his haphazard driving ways as soon as he returned to the road. I rarely ask him for a lift for some reason.

What doesn’t help is the out-dated speed limits on the motorway. A top speed of 70 miles an hour was designated at a time when 70 was considered fast. Nowadays, even a 1.3 litre Vauxhall Corsa (I had one as a courtesy car t’other day and it sucked, man) would consider 70mph a sluggish trot but the powers that be grimly cling to this outdated limit on the spurious grounds that it keeps the number of accidents down. Accidents occur mainly when roads are too congested which is all too often. With drivers pandering along at such slow speeds, it hardly surprising that pile ups occur when the margin for error is so small with vast tracts of traffic all moving in tightly knit conoys.


Still, the reality appears to be thus:

The antiquated 70 mile and hour speed limit on motorways is here to stay

The Government is pulling back from it’s speed camera campaign due to the public’s perception that it is merely a revenue generation scheme. More and more cameras are disappearing although only 1 in 3 are situated at recognised accident black spots anyway

More and more people are making their own home made devices in a bid to get drivers to slow down

Driving slower DOES reduce road deaths

So what do I conclude?

Well, I honestly don’t like speed cameras. I understand their need but that doesn’t make me like them. I mean, I understand the need for Simon Cowell but I don’t have to like him. Actually, there is no need for Simon Cowell….

However, there are still too many unnecessary road deaths in this country. Frankly, the new lolly pop style signs that sense drivers going to fast and flashes up a warning seem so much better. For me, these are the future.

Thanks for reading

Marandina

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