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Nothing to do with safety
Page 14
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Barry Proctor doesn't condone speeding. He doesn't even hate speed cameras — but he does hate the way they're being used to gather revenue and put drivers out of work, while doing nothing to improve road safety
There are some mornings when you dread the post arriving and the weighty thump of letters being dropped on your desk. No, it's not bills — usually this early morning letter phobia is brought on by conversations with our drivers that go something like: "Barry, can I have a word? I think I might have got flashed by a speed camera last night. I wasn't going that fast mind, so I might get off." Yes, and Gordon Brown might suddenly turn into Santa Claus. As soon as they mention the words 'speed camera' and 'flashed' I know that a note from one of the country's constabularies will soon be landing on my desk asking me who was driving the vehicle and whether they want to pay a £60 fine. And I seem to have been having a number of these conversations lately. Covering around 1,500 miles a week, our drivers are more likely than most motorists to encounter hundreds of the flipping things. Apparently they are just another hazard of the job but, with three penalty points delivered with each speeding ticket, this hazard can lose you your livelihood. If all speed cameras were created equal it wouldn't be too bad. but it's not like that, is it? On some occasions you'll get flashed for doing 3mph over the limit; on other occasions you'll only set the Gatso off as you whistle by 20mph beyond the limit. Also, it's one thing to have them in accident hot spots, but quite another when they're 100m or less after a speed limit drops from 60 to 40mph, or lurking in a hedgerow at the bottom of a hill where it's awfully hard to keep a laden artic down to a legal speed.
I am not against cameras per se or, indeed, for breaking the speed limit (the speed limits on good A-roads being another issue entirely) but it is maddening to see some of our best drivers forced out of the industry simply because the police want an extra few pennies to spend on speed cameras or new carpets for the chief constable's office. Cameras have stopped being about road safety and have simply become another method of raising revenue. Ifs hard enough out there as it is without the authorities finding yet another way to bleed us dry.