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I have been asked to respond to your letter as the Safety Camera Partnership is one of my responsibilities. As you rightly say the latest Safety Camera Partnership Handbook does allow Police to covertly enforce speed limits, however, what you have omitted to mention is that the handbook states: "there can be situations where the police judge that covert enforcement is necessary to deal with exceptional situations, such a where extreme car drivers or motorbike riders are prepared to reconnoitre roads for any cameras, including mobiles, before using them illegally for high-speed racing." This plainly does not encompass routine use of covert enforcement. I do not agrees that covert enforcement would be popular with road users, nor do I believe it would be a useful deterrent. The overt presence of officers engaged in speed enforcement impacts on more that just the individual speeding, they are seen by many road users. Our Force policy is that we are open with our activities to deter speeding. We have incorporated the change to the calculation of 85th percentile speeds and in future all will use "free flowing traffic speeds". The selection of the 15% exceptional sites is done by ranking all sites within five categories depending on speed and casualties. The details of this process will shortly be available for view on the safety camera website, www.slowitdown.co.uk Similarly details of deployments are on the website. Derbyshire has no plans to adopt a Community Speed Watch programme, instead Beat Officers have the facility to enforce speed limits in response to local community concerns. |