This is an email "bite" from a recent exchange of emails regarding speed limits:-
Hi xxxx,
I must admit I am fairly ambivalent about fixed speed cameras. But, by a speed camera I mean any device that measures the speed of a vehicle and is used for enforcement. Most of the hand-held devices also take photos. I myself would prefer randomly placed, covert and mobile cameras rather than fixed ones which every petrol head can have programmed into his/her “Road Angel” so that they can ignore limits on the rest of the network. The “howls of protest” from some about speed cameras, hence do not get my sympathy.
The issue for most vulnerable road user casualties is that they show very little clustering. Hence any data led retrospective engineering or speed camera placement will not resolve the historical collisions and will probably be in the wrong place for the future ones. We need a broader, area wide approach which will increase the awareness by all drivers of the need to moderate speed and action in order to not only increase the opportunity and time to avoid a collision in the event of an incident, but also to decrease traffic noise and pollution, and increase the amenity of other people using those streets.
Therefore lower speeds, particularly in residential and urban areas becomes a pivot point around which communities can debate the balance they want between maximising speed of vehicular transport and maximising amenity and safety. And once that debate begins and follows its course then most communities come to the conclusion that a 30 mph speed limit on residential and urban streets is not justifiable. We then get that “paradigm shift” when it becomes clear that Road Safety is about people and not highway engineering. Its about people realising that when we are driving in a motor vehicle we exist in a sea of individuals rather than a stream of motorists. We start to drive as an engagement with the rest of society rather than a disengagement. We recognise that “speed” is not the same as “progress” and that our journey times are dictated by the time spent at congestion and other stoppages and not our maximum speed. Of course once this is realised then suddenly so much of the “aura” that has been built up around motoring disappears and all those adverts are seen for be as shallow as they actually are.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not anti-motorist. But we do need to “normalise” our relationship with the motor vehicle and stop colluding with manufacturers who’s sole interest is in fuelling our emotional dependence upon their products.
I can quite understand there being a debate about the correct speed limit for a road, but do not agree with a “woolly” advisory limit that people can ignore with impunity.
