WHY has it taken a Freedom of Information Act request to force Lancashire Police to tell us how many drivers have been caught so-called speeding?
Why are they still refusing to say how much they have raked in? Are they scared by the amount or will it make drivers realise how much evasion actually goes on, ie, false registration details and number plates?
If the cameras really worked, the re
sults would be headlined on the police and camera organisation websites.
Cameras are speed-only cameras, they do not pick up anything else. Any other offence which comes to light is incidental, and drunk-driving is impossible to detect.
It is high time that these cameras were used with a degree of intelligence, and more closely tied to the conditions pertaining at the time of the so-called offence.
Speed limits are not and cannot be prescriptive at all times – if they were then no-one travelling within a limit would ever have an accident.
The same applies to speeds above the limit. If the rest of Europe, using the same vehicles, can travel at 80mph and in some cases more, what is it about UK motorways and right-hand drive vehicles that is so dangerous that we have to have a 70 limit?
Why, if speeding is so dangerous, do the police not stop vehicles they see breaking the limit? If they spot an uninsured/unlicensed/unMOTed vehicle they do, so why not speeders?
Once you start seriously looking at current road safety policy, the questions just mount up and up. It begins to look as if road safety is being compromised by the commercial aspects of enforcement.
No, I do not have points on my licence, but three years ago I was accused of speeding by Lancashire Police and attended a speed awareness course.
I was told that 33 per cent of accidents have speed as a factor. RoSPA now says the true figure is five per cent of accidents involve vehicles travelling above the posted limit.
R L Midgley
Thornton-in-Lonsdale
Ingleton
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