We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on the Business Car website. However, if you would like to, you can change your cookies at any time
The start point for the best source of fleet information |
Britain's first-ever camera, a Gatso on the westbound A316 over Twickenham bridge, came into operation 20 years ago.
According to home office figures, by 2000 just under 600,000 motorists were caught speeding by cameras in England and Wales.
This was around the time when the 'netting off' system began, allowing local authorities to receive a percentage of revenue. In 2007 1.8?million drivers were caught, representing an annual income of more than £100 million.
Local police and councils joined forces to form safety camera partnerships, picking out sites which the Government would then fund. According to AA figures, camera numbers multiplied from 1,600 in 2000 to 4,737 in 2007.
But have they changed the culture of driving, causing motorists to respect speed limits and generally slow down, and have they reduced the numbers of accidents?
This is hard to prove - simply because we have no knowledge of how many accidents would have occurred without the cameras and whether a different approach to road safety would have improved driving standards.
The upshot is, we simply don't know - hence the reason this debate will probably rumble on for another 20 years, or for however long they remain a feature of our motoring landscape.
I don't believe they have created a culture of safer driving, nor a culture of slower driving. They have, however, created a culture of avoiding being caught and I feel the Government's approach is too one-dimensional.
If we take another national issue, such as crime, there are many preventative initiatives to reduce it and work with people to change behaviour, but there is still the threat of prosecution and prison if you commit one.
With driving, I fail to see where the Government is working preventatively to change behaviour and cannot recall a single high profile campaign that seeks to achieve this. Ask anyone what the Government does to stop speeding and I'd guess that 99 out of 100 would say, 'speed cameras'.
Safer driving equals less accidents, which equals less injuries and less strain on the emergency services and the NHS. Even if we have to adopt such a mercenary perspective as this, isn't it time the Government stopped just trying to catch speeders and attempted to reduce the likelihood of drivers doing it in the first place?
If you don't believe this level of wide scale change is possible, consider your reaction if someone lit a cigarette at work. In today's society there would be outrage, 20 years ago no-one would have batted an eyelid.
So why can't the same cultural shift be achieved with driving?
Follow BusinessCar on TWITTER.
BusinessCar magazine ©2019
Business Car Magazine © 2020 | Business Car is part of NS Media Group.
