Aha now we know why Nanny is so keen on speed cameras.
Not for our safety...it's the money stupid!
It seems that the Treasury took more than £15M from the fines paid by drivers caught by speed cameras in England and Wales in 2005/2006.
Government spokesman in the House of Lords, Lord Bassam, said receipts from fines totalled more than £114.6M.
Some £99.5M of that was "directly attributed to the prevention, detection and enforcement of offences".
The surplus?
Guess where that went?
To the Treasury.
Lord Bassam says that the "sole purpose of speed cameras is casualty reduction".
BOLLOCKS!
>sole purpose of speed cameras is casualty reduction
ReplyDeleteHmmm, so why has the DfT scrapped the study into the effectiveness of cameras? Anyone else think it may be because the evidence was going the wrong way?
Of course if they wanted to convince people that cameras really are about accident reduction the speed limit coule be written on the back of the things and no fines would be levied - only points applied. Like they have done in Holland. Funny that that hasn't happened here isn't it? But it's all about safety, honest!
Ah! But they changed all the rules about who gets what from the take and who makes the decisions about deployment. Effective April 1st last iirc.
ReplyDeleteNo longer the Govt's problem, the local authorities are in control. (Oxymoron?)
£15M out of a total of £114M doesn't seem exactly excessive. I thought it was a bit more than that, to be honest.
ReplyDeleteAnon - "Of course if they wanted to convince people that cameras really are about accident reduction the speed limit coule be written on the back of the things and no fines would be levied - only points applied."
I think I'd much rather a system where they issued fines and not points... it is, after all, the points that cause the real problem.
Personally I have no problem with the government raising a bit of revenue this way. After all, tax revenue has to come from somewhere, and I kind of like the idea of a tax you can avoid paying simply by not breaking the law.
If fines then so be it, however I would like an american approach, as I believe one of the states has decreed that 90 % of all speeding fines from gatso's, go into the local schools system.
ReplyDeleteThat way the state doesn't benefit at all, why can't we have that here, at least it would go some way to making the claim its not about money more plausable