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Speedcam to net £1.3m a year - and it's not about safety
Article by: Darren Griffin
Date: 8 Jul 2010
 A controversial speed camera site in Poole, Dorset has been catching 1,800 motorists every month, that is a total income of over £1.3m a year.
The speed camera on Holes Bay road was one of the Monitron red-light cameras converted into dual purpose red-light/speed enforcement cameras last year as we forewarned here.
The speed camera is cynically placed at a spot where the dual-carriageway speed limit reduces to 30mph and has been installed despite official accident figures that show there have been no fatalities in over 10 years.
Perhaps we can now ask that they stop calling them 'Safety Cameras' and admit that they are, as many of us suspect, simply another income stream.
| Comments
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 Posted by NickG on Thu Jul 08, 2010 8:45 am |
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The camera should be clearly marked with this new logo I've designed:
Twitter: @nickg_uk |
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| Posted by Guivre46 on Thu Jul 08, 2010 9:34 am |
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Perhaps it could also display the amount of income it is generating in real time?
I'm just appalled at this undermining of the safety ethos. The best way is 1) give information about hazards/restrictions in good time, 2) encourage the less responsible to co-operate (clearly marked camera), 3) take action to remove the non-cooperative from the roads (any method you can think of).
Mike R [aka Wyvern46]
Go 530T - unsupported
Go550 Live [not renewed]
Kia In-dash Tomtom |
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| Posted by hpyatt on Fri Jul 09, 2010 7:08 am |
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Can you please publicise as much as possible the speed camera system they have in Portugal, where they really are concerned with safety and not profit. There the speed cameras are linked to a pedestrian crossing 200m further on. If you break the limit the crossing changes to red - both ways - for 45 seconds thus ensuring that all traffic slows down. Ths first time I did it, not understanding the warning signs placed 100m before the zone, I could feel the eyes of the driver going the other way boring into me in anger for having stopped him too. The system works and does not raise one cent in income for the authorities.
It is important that all politicians , local and national, learn and understand that that is a systems of spped controll all motorists would agree and comply with.
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| Posted by aj2052 on Sat Jul 10, 2010 10:52 pm |
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We must be lucky in our neck of the woods:
| Quote: | More than £1 million was paid out in speed camera fines in Leicestershire in 12 months, new figures show.
A Freedom of Information request to the county's speed camera partnership found motorists were fined £1,058,880 in 2008-09, the most recently available figures.
Drivers in Nottinghamshire paid out more than double that figure at £2,380,980, while Derbyshire had the lowest speed camera income in the East Midlands at £762,960.
The data was compiled for a new report from the Taxpayers' Alliance, which looked at how much money was earned from road fines and how effective speed cameras were at reducing road deaths.
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Moto G5s Plus, Sygic 17.4.8 |
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| Posted by Darren on Sun Jul 11, 2010 10:21 am |
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| hpyatt Wrote: | | Can you please publicise as much as possible the speed camera system they have in Portugal, where they really are concerned with safety and not profit. There the speed cameras are linked to a pedestrian crossing 200m further on. |
What a great idea! Sadly it will never be adopted here because money is a huge part of our enforcement policies, always has, always will be. Education has always taken a back seat 
Darren Griffin |
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| Posted by clpxm39 on Tue Jul 13, 2010 11:24 am |
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It's clearly labelled 30 though, and the camera is several hundred yards further on.
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| Posted by Andy_P on Tue Jul 13, 2010 3:24 pm |
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About 180 yards actually.
Coming from the 50 limit, if you were distracted and only spotted the signs as you passed them, that gives you about 7.4 seconds to decelerate before you reach the camera (by my dodgy maths!).
"Settling in nicely" ;-) |
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| Posted by Darren on Tue Jul 13, 2010 3:56 pm |
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Another issue is drivers take many varied visual clues into account when calculating the correct speed to drive at (in the absence of signage).
Yes, that's like the drop from 70 down to 50 on the A40 at Northolt Aerodrome. There's no apparent reason for it, and a Monitron camera just a couple of hundred yards after it.
Even if you begin to slow down gently as soon as you see the sign you are in danger of still being over the limit when you reach the camera. Therefore there is a lot of panic braking, which CAN'T be safe on a major road.
Darren Griffin |
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| Posted by keefieh on Fri Jul 30, 2010 8:35 pm |
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| Darren Wrote: | Another issue is drivers take many varied visual clues into account when calculating the correct speed to drive at (in the absence of signage).
Yes, that's like the drop from 70 down to 50 on the A40 at Northolt Aerodrome. There's no apparent reason for it, and a Monitron camera just a couple of hundred yards after it.
Even if you begin to slow down gently as soon as you see the sign you are in danger of still being over the limit when you reach the camera. Therefore there is a lot of panic braking, which CAN'T be safe on a major road. |
I use the A40 through Northolt regularly, that camera is a real hazard and I now know to slow down well in advance of it and leave at least double my normal gap between myself and the car in front. I then have time to admire all the fresh skid marks on the road!
Cheers, Keef.
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