Response to Conservative Party announcement on Safety Camera Partnerships 06/10/09

We understand through the media and from the Conservative Party’s website that today the shadow transport secretary, Theresa Villiers, is “to announce a radical plan to improve road safety and end the relentless expansion of fixed speed cameras.”

The Devon and Cornwall Safety Camera Partnership has yet to see any detail or research on which the Conservative Party’s proposed policy is based. When this becomes available the Partnership will work with partners to generate a response to both this, as well as the current government’s ‘A Safer Way’ consultation exercise.

The Devon and Cornwall Safety Camera Partnership operate both fixed and mobile safety cameras as well as average speed systems (mostly at roadwork sites and / or on trunk roads).

On average we have seen approximately a 60% reduction in the level of killed or serious injury collisions at our camera sites and also reductions in the minor injury collisions. This represents reduced levels of suffering and misery caused by injury collisions in Devon and Cornwall, however the level of injury collisions still is unacceptably high.

There has not been an ‘expansion of fixed speed cameras’, the number of fixed housings has actually fallen slightly over the last few years in Devon and Cornwall. Where we have been able to take advantage of changes in road use or a major improvement schemes to remove cameras we will.

In community PACT meetings (Partners and Communities Together) speeding is almost always within the top three concerns of local residents, and the Police and local authority partners will task mobile camera enforcement where a speeding problem has been identified as an appropriate solution.

We have been able to introduce schemes to deal with motorists marginally exceeding the speed limit through either warning letters or speed awareness course referrals. This now accounts for about 40 – 45% of our contact with motorists through camera activations, and gives drivers the opportunity to slow down before we prosecute.

Where detected speeds are higher we will still deal with those through a fixed penalty notice or through the court process, but the numbers of these offences are now significantly dropping from the level of a few years ago.

We note Edmund King of the Automobile Association, has been quoted as saying “We are slightly concerned. Road deaths have been falling year on year since fixed speed cameras were introduced and 70 per cent of our members support them.” This level of support seems to be typical of the level of support that opinion surveys typically show for safety camera operation.

As a partnership, we would like to take this opportunity to thank the large number of motorists who have chosen join the majority of drivers in moderating their speeds, which contributes to the reducing levels of injury experienced on Devon and Cornwall’s roads.