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Thank you for your letter of 4 November on behalf of your constituent about speed enforcement safety cameras. Your constituent's appreciation of the need for speed enforcement cameras is helpful and he is quite right in his belief that excessive and inappropriate speed is a major contributory factor in around a third of all road accidents. The observance of speed limits and their proper enforcement saves lives and reduces injuries. The key to the success of safety cameras is that they should be deployed where they will have most road safety benefit, and that is most likely to be where there have been collisions resulting in fatalities or serious injuries. The rules for the safety camera netting off scheme have been developed with that aim in mind. They demand that partnerships, when compiling their operational case to join the scheme, should use the guideline of four accidents resulting in people being killed or seriously injured (KSI's) at sites they propose to enforce using cameras. The rules for the scheme do, however, allow an element of prevantative enforcement so that units may be deployed where the KSI guidelines are not met but where speeding is a problem. No two areas are the same and it is necessary to allow some operational discretion. No firm evidence exists one way or the other on whether or not highly visible cameras obtain better casualty reduction than less visible or hidden cameras. In New Zealand the Government decided that hidden cameras were more effective, but it is also possible to point to British Columbia in Canada that took the decision to stop entirely speed camera enforcement in the belief that it was having no effect on improving road safety. Neither approach is in my view right for the UK. On balance I believe that making them visible is the right way forward. The primary purpose of cameras is to maximise their road safety benefits, and if drivers remain unaware of the presence of cameras, they may be less likely to reduce their speed. Speeding, in common with any criminal activity, is something we wish to discourage, and thus minimise the need to catch drivers. I believe that if the public understand and accept the deployment of cameras in an open way, they are more likely to respond and reduce their speeds as required. And that is exactly what is happening in the safety camera partnership areas that are participating in netting off. Partnerships must put in place an effective communications strategy to ensure the local people have a clear idea of why and where cameras are being deployed in their area. Experience is showing that this approach is ensuring people recognise and support the use of cameras where appropriate. Since their inception some 10 years ago speed enforcement cameras have proved to be highly effective at reducing speeding and, when sited at dangerous sites or along problem routes, have reduced the number of those killed and seriously injured by up to 47%. Evidence also suggests that in addition to motorists slowing down in the immediate vicinity of camera sites, they have also been slowing down in the wider area where speed cameras are located. |