Gary Tayler: Speed cameras do not reduce road deaths

As the old saying goes "If you don't want to be drawn into a discussion, breath through your nose". On that basis as with letters on this topic in the past (including my own) Malcolm Dixon's letter questioning the NZ Police on the purpose and location of speed cameras is unlikely to be seriously answered by the regulators. This is because they cannot seriously answer his questions without admitting to revenue gathering and they will never do that; well not on the record anyway.

Instead, all he can expect in response to his letter, is vacuous type letters like the one from Clive Holland (which incidentally completely misses the point) and the reason for this is that Malcolm Dixon is right on the money with his concerns.

There is so much factual history now on the use and effectiveness of speed cameras that the statistics paint a gloomy picture. The two facts are;

1.Speed cameras have done nothing over the years that they have been operating to reduce death and carnage on the roads and yet the government allocated more funding in last years budget for more cameras and;

2.Cameras have only succeeded in generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue gathering paid into the consolidated fund.

Those two facts cannot be disputed.

How do these cameras generate so much revenue? Not by being operated in accident prone areas as stated on the police website but rather in areas where drivers are likely to exceed the speed limit often inadvertently and where risk of accident is low.

Take the camera van at Bay View for example. It parks regularly by the Franklin Rd corner north of Bay View township. That area, until a few years ago, was a 100k zone but was without warning, reduced to 70k despite there being no serious accidents in the area for years, and none since. Given the vans frequency, it no doubt has a high cash collection rate but a zero crash reduction rate.

But two kilometres up the road is the dangerous state highway 5 intersection where lunatic drivers frequently come through the give way intersection into state highway 2 without stopping or even looking. It is only because the locals have had so many near misses, that they drop their speed to 60-70ks when approaching that intersection anticipating that a car will pull out in front of them, as so often happens. Thus, crashes are avoided or minimised and don't result in fatalities. A speed camera would be worthless in this situation.

As long as the policy continues on as revenue gathering only, as it has since first introduced, there will continue to be a common increase in both cash collection and the road toll as it has for decades. At the end of every year the Police Department will find itself yet again, expressing further disappointment at the increasing road toll but the camera shutters will continue to click and the dollars with continue to flow into governments public trough with noting to show for it in of the road toll.

So the conclusion is that cameras are and will continue to be worthless in terms of road safety so long as they continue to focus on ripping drivers off by being put in the "High Cash areas" for revenue gathering purposes only, under the guise of road safety, instead of "High Crash areas"

And letters like this one and Malcolm Dixon's will continue to be met with silence.

Gary Tayler is an employment law specialist based in Hawke's Bay.