The trouble with speed camerasI think I speak for the majority of drivers when I say I'm not all that bothered about speed cameras. They don't make me feel particularly safe, but then again they don't make me feel threatened either. A speed camera is just one more thing to be aware of while driving, like a signpost or a road cone. There doesn't seem anything unfair about them. They only flash you if you're breaking the law, but people seem to think the cameras are an attack on their civil liberties - as though we had the right to speed before they appeared. This doesn't mean I'm a big fan of speed cameras, however. For every outraged driver who complains about them, there seems to be another councillor or safety consultant who will swear blind that they save lives and help Granny cross the road. But a Gatso is no substitute for a policeman. It does one job brilliantly - catching speeding drivers - but there's no evidence as yet to show that it saves lives. Indeed in many cases accident rates around camera sites have gone up slightly, no doubt due to the amount of sudden breaking and accelerating that goes on. But if they don't make a lot of headway in terms of crash rates, this UK's camera partnerships certainly make up for it in terms of revenue. At £60 a pop, it costs about the same to have a studio portrait done as it does to get your picture taken by Gatso. That's a drop in the ocean next to the average young driver car insurance premium, but it's a significant amount of money nevertheless - and when you're doing the collecting those £60's soon start to add up. Cash from cameras is becoming such a reliable income for the police it is practically a new type of taxation - and this is one of the elements that so infuriates anti-camera lobbyists. But what's wrong with tapping petty criminals for a little revenue? This country's official tax system is riddled with outrageous inconsistencies (basing council tax bands on ten year old house prices for instance, or charging VAT on tampons), so why not be outraged about those instead? I guess it's for the same reason as people feel the eyes of some Orwellian Big Brother staring at them down the barrel of a Gatso, but will cheerfully walk through city centres, shops and office blocks without a second's thought to all the CCTV cameras watching them: Cars make people crazy.
This is a nation of orderly queuers and stoic politeness. Nobody complains about waiting 20 minutes to pay for shopping on a weeknight when only half the checkouts are open. Nobody flies off the handle when a computerised voice informs them the trains are all running an hour late. We pay our council tax and VAT. But for some reason, all of that docility goes out the window when we get behind the wheel of a car. We'll do anything to shave just a few seconds of journey times: race through falling level crossing barriers; pull out of blind junctions without stopping; cut each other up; sound the horn; scream and shout. And when that Gatso flashbulb goes off as you're racing home at 80 mph (for what? Fresh junk mail from credit card companies and motor insurance firms? A very important cup of tea and a biscuit?) it really gets your goat. Much as with spiders and ginger people the level of public hatred directed at speed cameras is extraordinary and unwarranted. They become weird metal totems of hate. For some, the hatred becomes a hobby. Members of the vigilante group Motorists Against Detection (MAD) spend their weekends destroying cameras, only to have them repaired and refitted days later by the transport authorities. Under the instruction of bandit-hero "Captain Gatso", MAD members use fire, explosives, heavy machinery, spray paint and the kind of brute strength that only comes from fanatical hatred to neuter, mangle or eradicate the innocent cameras. It all beggars belief. As I said to begin with, I'm a lot more concerned by things like young driver car insurance than I am by speed cameras. It's just most days it seems I'm in the minority.
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