Community Speed Watch Continues To Expand

[RobBrady]

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In what appears to be a growing trend, the citizens of another UK town are taking to the streets with a hand-held speed camera - this time it's the turn of Farnworth, a subdistrict of Bolton.

Local councillor Jean Gillies says she has no shortage of volunteers following her application to Bolton Council to fund the device and associated training.

She commented: "We all have hot-spots in our areas where things are bad. I have got plenty of volunteers to do it. We've ordered a speed gun and they'll be trained to use it in these areas."

As the cameras are not of the correct legal specification, this "educational" project will only issue warnings to speeding drivers - no-one will be ticketed.

The scheme hopes to highlight problem areas and repeat offenders will be contacted by the police.

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_________________
Robert Brady

[b33jay]

Most of these schemes die a natural death as did my local ones. Very keen group start off but soon find it is a boring situation pinging cars with obsolete equipment and with little follow up to reports they make.

A group cannot take action but submits reports to the police who send out a warning to drivers if thought justified. My local group was submitting 40 or more reports after every session and the police decided to abandon support owing lack of officers available. The group broke up shortly after.

[RobBrady]

[technik]

[M8TJT]

Did you say dodgers or doggers?

[Roy124]

It is certainly true that Community Speed Watches need higher level support. They also need grass roots support too.

In Lincolnshire the head of the Road Safety partnership has put speed watch near the top of her agenda. This year there has been an increase in deaths 38 compared with 32 last year so far.

We get support and have just had two more sites approved. There has been a big increase in activity and letters out with 5,000 first letters to date. I am not sure when what started. The number of second letters is much lower, and police visits in the tens not hundreds which is encouraging.

We have been more active this summer but are still getting 8-10% speeding in each hour we spend.

At the grass roots level we have a keen chairman of the parish council who posts the observations online. Here support is vital as reports must be filed within 48 hours. Then there are the watch teams. 4 of us are parish councillors and two are husbands of.

We cover 5 villages but so far only have 4 available sites in 3 villages. There are coffin dodgers as you so describe us in those other villages but none has volunteered though they do complain about speeding.

The highest we have had is 52. The most remarkable last week was the highest number of speeders were clocked after they passed the Community Speed Watch sign. One worries about their observational powers and cognitive reaction. Others actually speed up when they see us!

PS: I forgot, Project Edward:

This is an EU wide initiative on 26th September to get as many Community Watches and mobile vans out on that one day. There will be media coverage but maybe only post mortem.

[RobBrady]

Very interesting Roy, especially the speeding up bit! Do the police follow this behaviour up accordingly?
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Robert Brady

[b33jay]

I wonder how many teams will still be operational after 6 months. My local setup was managed initially by a police inspector who was transferred shortly afterwards. Thereafter, as I reported earlier, the group became disillusioned and broke up when the police declined to act on reported speeders owing to lack of available officers. I hadn't seen a group anywhere else in the county until recently. This was a Community Speed Awareness VAN with camera bizarrely placed in the middle of a village High Street which had average speed cameras installed at each end a few weeks earlier. It seems that some councillors have more clout than others!

The EU Project Edward, is not specifically about Speed Watch groups but about road deaths in Europe and, hopefully, any post mortem media coverage is not literal

[Roy124]

b33Jay, you are of course right. At the moment we are a 'one trick pony'.

We covered two hot spots and are now going to cover 4. We have seen a small decrease in speeding in one hot spot but that it thought to be because transit motorists are the majority. At the new ones we hope the locals will get the message.

If the speeders drop to below 5% then we will have achieved our initial aim. If the level holds low then the frequency of checks can be reduced.

Our problem is a very keen coordinator but at the moment no deputy for data entry.

[Roy124]

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