It's official - speed cameras used to make money, not save life

It's been obvious to anyone with the slightest grasp of reality that speed cameras have, from their introduction, been used for making money. and the police have been lying to the public about their enforcement activities. 

Now, even Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) has recognised this.

https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/wp-content/uploads/roads-policing-not-optional-an-inspection-of-roads-policing-in-england-and-wales.pdf

It is not surprising that the fairly short list of forces that were inspected includes Dorset and Devon & Cornwall

It's an interesting report apparently quite straight and confirming some of the things I've been saying for decades, such as:

1. Traffic officers, lack of training and knowledge

2. Lack of intelligence support

3. some forces unable to provide any evidence of a strategic approach to reducing deaths on the road

4. Forces were unable to demonstrate that their enforcement activity was based on a comprehensive understanding of the causes of deaths and serious injury

5. The lack of analytical support means that enforcement activity is often unfocused and haphazard, and its effectiveness isn’t evaluated.

6. There was also a lack of evaluation of what road safety activities work.

Naturally, there are moments of utter nonsense in the report such as a graph (Figure 4) showing slightly increasing speeding penalties and slightly reducing casualties over 8 years and concluding that this means that speed penalties reduce casualties without considering any other factors!! Oh dear. And of course it has been careful to avoid any detail about which problems were found where.

But astonishingly, even the HMICFRS has written:

"This apparent unwillingness to support education over enforcement had led to suspicion among officers, including some at chief officer level, that the focus of activity was intended to increase revenue for the safety partnership. In support of this, they gave examples of some camera sites that they believed didn’t have a history of collisions or other identified vulnerabilities.

Elsewhere, we were told that the reason enforcement took place at certain locations was that they were “good hunting grounds”, rather than because they had a history of collisions."

HMICRFS has also missed the fact that astonishingly, in Dorset, the police have refused to join the national course scheme. So while everyone else gets £45 per course place, Dorset gets a whopping £120. And if you ask where this goes, PCC Martyn Underhill will wriggle, dodge, ignore, protect and cover up for 2 years if necessary to avoid answering.

Lo and behold in the report, "The level of interpretation, and misinterpretation, that the current advice is open to isn’t helpful in ensuring that the public perception is one of fairness. We believe that clarity is required regarding what constitutes reasonable costs and what, if any, revenue partnerships and forces gain from the provision of speed awareness courses and other driver education initiatives"

So it is remarkable, for me, to see so much of what I have been saying for so long finally being recognised by the HMICFRS.

The problem is, is anything actually going to improve? With PCCs like Martyn Underhill (Dorset) and Alison Hernandez (Devon and Cornwall) simply providing another layer of bureaucracy, cost, and protection for serious senior level police incompetent, corruption and waste, MPs like Michael Tomlinson turning a blind eye and the police "watchdog" IOPC not just asleep but actively sweeping serious complaints under the carpet, it seems we will continue to sleepwalk into a continuing escalation of police waste, incompetence and corruption.

Let's not forget the seriousness of this, the police are lying to make money. That is fraud, almost certainly the greatest fraud of all time. And this greed is costing life. Policing in the UK needs a complete rebuild.

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Ian Belchamber