Driving Archive

If there is any remaining doubt that the motorist is not being fleeced under Labour, here’s the proof: speed “safety” cameras now raise £250,000 A DAY under Labour, that’s £88 million a year.

Speed cameras do not really do much for road safety/ Before they were introduced road fatalities were dropping year on year to around about 3,000 deaths on the roads; after they were introduced, the road death figure has remained at roughly 3,000 a year, i.e. speed cameras halted the decline of road deaths – nice going, Big Brother.

And now we learn that the number of tickets issued per year has doubled under Labour and that the ZaNuLabour stasi want to introduce more cameras that will

take digital pictures and link to a control centre wirelessly, are set to be approved by the Home Office within months. The proliferation of cameras renews fears of “Big Brother Britain”.

Ah Labour, the party of Big Brother, unfair taxes (sorry, fines), double-dealing, hypocrisym unfairness and incompetence – when’s the General Election so we can ditch this shower?

H/T The Telegraph

The Telegraph reports that average speed cameras will now be used in residential areas. I think that in the future, this is the final straw that broke the camel’s back for the motorist.

First, a disclaimer: I don’t speed through villages, I don’t speed where unsafe, but I occasionally go over the speed limit in other areas where it is safe to do so. A good hypothetical example of this would be road that was previously a 60mph limit (for years) and was then reduced to a 40mph limit (and had a speed camera slapped on it).

There’s a worrying trend that many roads are having their limits reduced and a speed camera placed on them, purely for the point of raising revenue. Yes, speed cameras can reduce accidents in accident blackspots, but I suggest you read about regression to the mean for an explanation why placing them in such spots is flawed.

Anyhoo, back to the cameras: they will be placed at entrances and exits to various estates and zones to make sure you can’t escape by rat-running (but that won’t stop people from trying). As previously stated, I don’t speed through villages, but this will lead to drivers watching their speedometer instead of watching the road and the environment around them, which is unsafe. What’s worse is road speed limits will be downgraded before the cameras are installed, i.e. from 30mph to 20mph – tell me again that cameras are not revenue-raisers?

Sigh – it’s just another part of the Government’s panopticon project, where you are measured, weighed, surveilled, judged, monitored in everything you do…

Peter Roberts has created a petition against the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy, and as of writing it has garnered over 275,000 signatures – roughly 75,000 of those being added since I signed it yesterday.

In a nutshell, the proposed scheme would monitor people’s cars and their journeys, and charge them per mile. An in extremis (rush hour, city centre) cost could be as much as £1.34 a mile. Even at £0.30, a round trip to visit my mother would cost me £120, more than 3 times in what I pay in petrol in total (not just tax, which is still a disgusting 75% or so of fuel cost).

The horrendous cost of travelling for pleasure or work aside, the truly insidious nature of the scheme is this: to work out how much you’ll be charged, a “black box” will be installed in your car to monitor where you’ve been (and how fast you were going, I’m sure). Are you happy with the Government, police and third-party monitoring company knowing where you’ve been, how fast, at what hours of the day?

Ah, but I forget: “If you’ve not done anything wrong, you’ve nothing to fear”; bullshit. Whatever happened to guilty until proven innocent? A right to privacy?

And just because we can be tracked by Automatic Number Plate Recognition, and our mobile phones does not imbue the government to foist yet another intrusive surveillance system on us.

So, find out more about road pricing from the Association Of British Drivers, and don’t forget to sign the petition!