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Cumbria Bucks Speed Camera Trend


Article by: robert
Date: 19 Sep 2010

pocketgpsworld.comMany councils have been in the news lately following decisions to cut back on their speed camera programmes. Following the Government's road safety budget cuts many are saying that they simply cannot afford to keep the cameras running.

According to Cumbria's News and Star their council is doing the opposite.

The Cumbria Road Safety Partnership not only believes that their cameras will survive, but they are going ahead with the installation of two new cameras in December.

They bought the cameras out of last year’s budget, but had to keep them under wraps until they were sure that they could afford the running costs.

As part of the coalition's nationwide £38 million cuts, Cumbria lost £255,000 funding - £213,000 of which was originally budgeted for speed cameras.
Comments
Posted by Guivre46 on Sun Sep 19, 2010 2:43 pm Reply with quote

From News and Star article: Since 2007, Cumbria Road Safety Partnership has been allowed to site mobile cameras where it wants. Previously, it had to stick to 50 so-called ‘accident hot spots’.


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Posted by iainkirk on Sun Sep 19, 2010 9:48 pm Reply with quote

Being a Cumbrian, I can categorically state that Cumbria Police see speed cameras as a cash machine.

The DO NOT use them in accident blackspots, but instead choose the best locations to generate the largest number of fines - ie places where the scamera van can see you from the furthest distance away, on the safest sections of motorway.


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Posted by DarrenR21373 on Mon Sep 20, 2010 5:59 pm Reply with quote

Some councils just don't seem to get it - the more money they generate, the more they are giving to the Government! They seem to have forgotten that they don't receive the money themselves any more Rolling Eyes

Mind you, I suppose it could help pay for some of the debt the last lot landed us with...


Drive carefully; the Government needs all the Taxpayers it can get.

 
Posted by gem on Tue Sep 21, 2010 10:09 pm Reply with quote

iainkirk Wrote:
Being a Cumbrian, I can categorically state that Cumbria Police see speed cameras as a cash machine.


I second that.

The van is usually above the M6 bridges at quiet times (e.g. 8am on Sat morning). Twisted Evil

The reason being is that Kevin and his team might start work early and it is so easy to catch the motorist then. You can be tracked with no other obstacle vehicle and then in the afternoon they process the tapes.

It is harded to follow your car if in a convoy or if they follow the front car, when you look at the photos one might argue they were capturing the vehicle behind.

Cumbria used to publish their locations in advance but stopped it (you decide why).


 
Posted by pasho9 on Fri Sep 24, 2010 10:13 am Reply with quote

Cumbria is a dysfunctional county run by a county council peopled with ego-tripping ignoramusses who seek to demonstrate their superiority by wasting more public money than anyone else.

Councillors doubtless preen themselves at whatever unnecessary Local Government conferences they attend -- "oh, we pay our chief executive more than you do", "we pay our management people more than you do" -- by way of signalling that when it comes to Local Government of the macho kind, Cumbria is supreme.

The fact that this bunch of smug self-serving incompetents unnecessarily jacked up the salary of a chief executive who having received it promptly went on gardening leave and retired on a massive pension deters the county council not one jot. The fact that councillors then had to hike all the salaries of the management tier beneath that of the departed chief executive for parity reasons means not one jot.

Cumbria County Council's 'road safety partnership' is a typically unctuous phrase deployed in a laughable attempt to disguise the truth. With roads that are crumbling and an infrastructure that was far from good in the first place, the Council clings to the revenue generated from getting motorists nicked on sunny Sunday mornings on an empty M6 (including me) as well as (for example) from a mobile camera it regularly positions at the top of a hill with the lens pointing downwards to catch any vehicle which inadvertently over-accelerates on its upward climb and thereby exceeds 33mph.

However, such is the Third World condition of that particular road -- Durranhill Road -- that all vehicles have to move carefully to avoid damage. Sadly, some don't move as carefully as they should, and so swing out into the path of oncoming vehicles to avoid the ruptured surface in front of them, such manoeuvering being an accident waiting to happen.

This obviously unsafe road has been the subject of complaints for at least a year, but the County Council's concept of duty has nothing to do with serving its residents, only feeding councillors' own self-regard, whilst safety has nothing to do with the protection of road users but everything to do with bagging cash in as sleazy a way as possible ("Safety Partnership".)

NB: The most ludicrous Local Authority in the country is, of course, the one which has so mismanaged its affairs that it has had the nerve to ask the NHS to grit its roads this winter. (Yes, that's right: the NHS.)

And yes, too, that Local Authority is none other than Cumbria County Council.

Advice: if you don't need to come to Cumbria, then stay well clear. Your absence might impact on a tourism economy without which Cumbria would probably be bankrupt, but don't worry about that: the County Councill will ensure that even more cameras are positioned in more places on the area's crumbling roads, and then spend the cash on patronising its own managers in another pre-pubertal exercise to demonstrate that it can pee higher up the wall than any other little boy.


 
Posted by mch2qh on Fri Sep 24, 2010 12:14 pm Reply with quote

Councils make more money from mobile cameras - but are putting a "nice spin" on removing the fixed cameras to look good.

Need proof? I picked up a speeding ticket from a mobile camera in Swindon recently. After almost a month my license hadn't returned and I eventually located the processing office and I needed it to hire a car on an overseas trip. A very helpful lady (yes, truly helpful and apologetic about the delay) explained that since the switch from fixed to mobile cameras around Swindon the number of tickets has sky rocketed and she plus one colleague couldn't cope with the volumes any more. She located my licence, processed the fine and posted my licence back the same day - wierdly I was very happy to jump that queue.

The true answer is fixed cameras don't make enough money. By the way my crime was 78mph on a totally empty dual carriageway. Strange why the target easy places like this when the most dangerous roads in the country are single carriageways, especially B roads. We live on one and buses, trucks, police cars and every other manner of cars drive at high speed though our 30mph limit, setting off the illuminated 30 sign.

I was also following a mobile speed camera van the other day past Kemble Airfield in Gloucestershire, we were both doing a steady 60mph except I lost sight of the van when I came to the next village and slowed to the signed 30mph limit - it hurtled off ahead. And arn't mobile vans subject to the same speed limits as other vans, namely 50mph on single carriageway A & B roads?

That's my gripe over with, you can't beat 'em and you wouldn't want to join 'em. A bunch of hyocrits - except for the nice lady who processed my speeding ticket of course!!


 
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