Two approaches to speed enforcement

Here's a hint if you are riding a bike and see an unexpected speed camera: DON'T brake so hard that you crash. Courtesy of the online bike magazine Visordown, here we have two unlucky (or incompetent) bikers who did just that. What happened afterwards depends on where you live.

The Swiss biker, one Boris Maier from Bern, bailed out and was photographed sliding down the road next to his bike. The Dutch biker, an unnamed 50-year-old, well ... the same, really. Here's Boris, slowing gradually down from a measured 107 kph (66 mph):



... and here's Mr Nobody, having just been clocked at 137 kph (85 mph):



The Swiss biker was fined and told that another 3 kph would have lost him his licence. The Dutch biker wasn't charged with anything. The reasoning of the Dutch prosecutors was that, as he was technically not riding the bike at the time, no offence had been committed. I wonder how the Swiss justified charging Boris? Is there a law against sliding down the road while looking like a Power Ranger?

Serious point, though: let's say you were caught doing 60 mph just ten feet outside a 30 limit. Have you committed an offence? There is prima facie evidence that you did, as no vehicle on earth could accelerate fast enough to get you from a legal 30 to a legal 60 in that short distance*. But you were not speeding at the time the incident was recorded, so did not commit an offence. You must have broken the law, but you did not break the law. Any legal eagles know the answer to this one?

At one time, I am pretty sure that British law would have taken the Dutch approach - technically not an offence, guy's had his punishment, say no more about it. But now I think we would think like the Swiss: any evidence of lawbreaking must be cracked down on, hard, no matter how humourless or unreasonable.

I've heard a lot of good things about the Swiss, particularly their attitude to gun ownership and their use of referenda. But I wouldn't want to live there and ride a motorbike.

* My maths isn't up to calculating the rate of acceleration needed to do this, so I am making an assumption. If anyone knows better, you are very welcome to correct me.

What is the point of the Police?

Bit late to the party on this one, but I've been busy, and I couldn't let it pass.

What is the point of the Police? That's not a rhetorical question. Most people would probably agree that their purpose is twofold: firstly to deter and prevent crime from happening, and secondly to detect offenders and bring them before a court. I would hazard a guess that most people would regard evidence of successful policing as a low crime rate, however that may be achieved. But of the two approaches, which is the most important? Is it better that the Police act in such a way as to prevent crime from happening in the first place, or should they devote their energies to chasing the bad guys and bringing them to justice?

To take an example: if a policeman were walking down a busy street and met a gang of armed bank robbers, which would be preferable: that he spoke to them, advised them that the area was bristling with coppers and that they were bound to be arrested, and sent them home to think again; or that he allowed the robbery to take place, and then pursued and caught them, and turned them over to the CPS for prosecution, with all the risks to the general public that this would entail? There is an argument to be made for both. Prevention and deterrence is surely the ideal; but if there are repeat offenders, ones who do not seem to be amenable to deterrence, it may be necessary to catch them and then bang them up for a long time. But would the police ever be justified in allowing a crime to take place, purely so that they could get the evidence to do this? That is a step on the road to deploying agents provocateurs, which would be abhorrent to most people.

I am thinking of the recent case of Michael Thompson of Grimsby. He flashed his headlights to warn oncoming motorists of a mobile speed camera. He was pulled over by the police, taken to court, and found guilty of "obstructing a police officer in the course of her duties". He was fined £175, with £250 costs, and the iniquitous £15 'victim surcharge'. This is an outrageous decision, and one that must be overturned. If it isn't, it calls into question the principles of policing that I mentioned above.

The mobile speed cameras are part of a strategy to improve road safety by reducing speeds. That's a whole debate in itself, but let's accept for the moment the notion that reduced speeds mean fewer accidents, which is something we would all welcome. So what were the Police doing there? Were they deterring motorists from speeding, or where they trying to catch offenders? The fact that mobile camera sites are all well-signposted with those camera signs suggests that deterrence is the main aim. In that sense, someone warning other drivers of a camera is actually doing the Police's work for them. He is acting to slow down drivers who are approaching a hazardous area (it is a hazardous area, isn't it? I mean, that's why the cameras are there, aren't they?). Why would the Police advertise camera locations with those signs otherwise?

Unless ... unless the Police actually want people to speed so that they can catch and fine them. Here we come to the crux of the matter. Mr Thompson has angered the Police, and by extension the courts, by alerting people so they conform to the law, rather than blunder into a trap. He's shot their fox. And that reinforces our deep suspicion that these cameras are all about punishment, and by extension revenue, and nothing about safety and compliance.

Of course, the people he warned were probably only a few mph over the limit. If a lunatic in a big 4x4 doing 120 had been approaching and by his actions he had slowed it down to a safe speed, would the Police not have commended him for his public-spirited actions in preventing a possible tragedy? We'll never know. If speeding is as dangerous as they say it is, then any action to moderate other people's speed should be commended, surely?

To go back to my original example: here we have the Police, knowing that an armed bank robbery is about to take place, allowing the gang to go down the road, into the bank, waving their guns around, but ready to collar them when they emerge and then boast about their detection rates.

It's simple, really. He was "obstructing a police officer in the course of her duties", and now we know that those duties consist of allowing a crime to happen, and then catching the criminal red-handed. Anything preventing the crime is 'obstruction'.

It stinks. And if this judgement isn't overturned on appeal, then the cat is out of the bag. Speed cameras are money-machines, and nothing to do with safety.

If you're going to get caught, do it properly

A Swedish man took his six-litre Mercedes SLS to Switzerland and was caught on the A12 motorway (speed limit 120 kph) doing almost 300 kph. That's 180 mph in real money. He had passed many speed cameras, but had not been snapped because he was going too fast - most of the cameras can only read up to 200 kph. Only when he passed a new-generation camera that could react to his speed was he zapped.

The Swiss system of fines is based on the offender's income as well as the severity of the offence, and this guy appears to have drawn himself a poor hand. With a car costing £140,000, and caught at a speed described as the fastest anyone has ever been caught travelling in Switzerland, he was going to have his trousers taken down, that's for sure.

£650,000. A fine of over half-a-million pounds.

Now, the guy is probably a complete dick, and I have no time for those who use their money and clout to flout the law that other, lesser, people have to obey. But isn't that just a tiny bit draconian? That's an average UK worker's gross salary for about 30 years.

More to the point, how many people in Europe have been killed by drivers doing 180 mph on an autoroute, compared with the number killed by drink-drivers? I suspect the answers are zero, and lots.

(Source.)

Great minds ...

Courtesy of Obnoxio The Clown:



Hehe.

Not that I am condoning it, of course.

Can it be true?

This Conservative conference has been better than the other two by a country mile, which isn't saying much. But Osborne looks as though he is going to try to win the election by being honest with the electors. This is either foolhardy in the extreme, or a dazzling piece of political judgement - depending, I suppose, on who wins the election. I admire him for it. There is obviously some harsh medicine due to the British patient before he (or she) can begin to be cured, and if he lays it all out now, and the Tories are voted in on the strength of it, then Cameron will be playing a tough game with a reasonable hand.

Even better, rumour has it that speed cameras are going to be curtailed:

... which inspired Theresa Villiers to announce the effective end of speed cameras this week; the Tories won’t fund any more fixed speed cameras and councils will have to demonstrate that they are effective in cutting accidents before they are allowed to use them. The Tories are hoping that vehicle activated signs, which tell people what speed they are driving and are more effective at cutting accidents than speed cameras, will become the default on British roads.

The Times confirms it:

This (rogue clampers) clampdown would be extended to speed cameras, she (Theresa Villiers) said, promising to expose them to “real democratic control". She said: “That means publishing the information that's now kept secret on each speed camera's record on safety and on fines, so local communities can judge for themselves whether a camera should stay or whether it should go.”

I'm a fairly law-abiding bloke, but I break the speed limit almost every time I go out of the house. So, of course, do you, and so do about 95% of the British population. As a consequence, I - who was brought up to respect the law in all its forms, to be polite to and support the Police, and to be a Good Citizen in every way - have been busted a total of four times in 38 years of riding and driving. Four court appearances (or pathetic letters pleading mitigation), four fines, and four sets of points on my licence. I have no criminal record. That, and two parking tickets, are my only transgressions in five-and-a-bit decades on this planet.

It may surprise you to know this, but I am in favour of 20 mph zones and I think speed cameras, especially fully-automatic ones that need no human input, prosecute 100% of transgressions, and win all their cases, are a Good Thing. Yes, really. A speed camera is a devastatingly effective device for cutting the speed at which motorists travel and, used in the right place, can enhance everyone's safety to a large degree.

You will notice that I said "in the right place". That, of course, is the point. If the Government (or the local authority) declared that certain residential streets, and all areas within say 200m of a school or hospital, were to be 20 mph zones, enforced by speed cameras that never slept, and that caught 100% of offenders, I would be fully in support of that. Likewise, if cameras enforced red traffic lights, I would be in favour. People who speed where children play, or who jump red lights, are categorically a danger to everyone.

The point is that I, and I am sure millions like me, don't mind doing as we are told if we can see that there is a good reason. When, however, as is so often the case these days, there appears to be no reason for them or, even worse, that the cameras seem set to trap people who are doing nothing dangerous, then the credibility of the cameras, the speed limit system, and the law itself are all diminished.

Like the one I saw on the M4 between Bath and Reading a year or two ago. Two miles of road works, with an entirely reasonable 50 mph limit, enforced by cameras. Then the road works ended and the carriageway was free of cones, workmen and all signage. Visually, you could not see any trace of road works, and most would have assumed that the speed limit had ended. No signs to confirm or deny that. So most people gradually put their foot down and got back to a decent speed. The speed limit ended about a mile further on, with big national limit signs on either side of the road. And, just in front of the signs - a camera van. I bet they caught thousands that day. The artificial lengthening of the speed limit zone, and the positioning of the camera just within the limit, suggested to me that this was a deliberate attempt to catch as many otherwise law-abiding motorists as they could. To me, that is not just unfair, it's unwise. How many people had their respect for the law just a little bit reduced on that day? I did.

It's not as if they work at their stated purpose - reducing accidents. Indeed, there is an argument that they are worse than useless, and actually kill people. The figures for Killed and Seriously Injured (KSI) since the early 1990s (when speed cameras began to be introduced) have virtually flatlined, whereas they were in a steady decline for the previous 40 years.

I know that you can point to camera sites and show a reduction in accidents at that spot following the siting of a camera, but that is often just a statistical artefact. Look up 'regression to the mean' to see why.

If the Tories can reduce the number of cameras, and make authorities (who have done very nicely out of them) to justify the ones they keep, this can only be a good thing - for safety, for motorists' sanity, and ultimately for respect for the law. Those vehicle-activated signs (which remind the speeder beforehand, rather than punish him after the event) work much better for me and, apparently, for everyone else, as they are more effective at controlling speed than the best Gatso. Speed cameras have, for me, become a symbol of the arbitrary and harsh justice meted out to the otherwise harmless 'ordinary people' of Britain, that has become a characteristic of Labour's period of government. If the Tories can promise to do something sensible about it, they've got my vote.