What is better - prevention or cure? The government is obviously going for the latter as it receives the monies from the speeding fines.

I am not advocating exceeding the speed limit but why is the blame always placed at the feet of the motorist? What about:

a. The drunken pedestrian who staggers out into the road;
b. The idiotic parent who shoves the push chair into the road before looking, thinking nobody would hit their 'ickle baby';
c. The clown on the mobile phone or wired into their iPod and therefore unaware of anything happening more than six feet away from them;
d. The law-breaking cyclists who ride on the pavements, either forcing pedestrians out into the road or quickly switching from road to pavement and back;
e. The lazy pedestrians who are too bone idle to walk that extra five yards to the pelican crossing and try to cross the road by coming from behind a driver's line of sight;
f. The stupid dog walkers who use extending leads which enables Fido to run into the road if he sees a cat on the other side;
g. The pure and simple moron who just walks out into the road because they do not have the gumption to check for traffic.

These are just seven other road users who can easily cause accidents: I'm sure there are more. It's all very simple - everybody has to be responsible for their own actions when out on the road, be it driving, walking, cycling etc.

I appreciate the article is two years old but http://tinyurl.com/6g5uj2 says only one in every twenty road accidents is caused by the driver breaking the speed limit, i.e. 5%. Therefore, this means 95% of road accidents are not caused by speeding motorists. So I ask - why is so much effort expended in trying to cut out only 5% of the road accidents? It's really very simple - drivers go around in big metal boxes, each of which has a plate on the front and rear showing a unique series of alphanumerics to identify said box. It takes minimal effort for a camera to photograph a speeding vehicle,

...relay the information to a computer which tells a human who owns the vehicle. What would be far harder work would be getting PC Plod out and about and visually discouraging people from being idiots when using the road.

This is how the previous comment should have ended. Evidently the system only allows a set number of characters: it's a shame we can't be forewarned about it.

So, lets get this straight.

We're now hiding the cameras, because as expected, as a visual deterant they simply don't work.

We're now paying operatives to sit in vans taking pictures all day, but doesn't that raise the question that speed cameras were supposed to save money by releasing the need for human intervention keeping public sector pay down?.

Some areas are even paying thousands of pounds an hour to put a "speed camera helicopter" in the air.

Considering that the only part that is currently missing is a police officer actually pulling over the driver, when exactly is this government going to give up on this farce of a policy that has come virtually full circle and is only one step away from being right back where it started from, with real police, in real cars, apprehending drivers and if necessary taking away their keys as it should be.

Speed cameras were a joke, are a joke and will continue to be a joke until they finally accept that speed cameras are the expensive and extremly limited option for road safety and continuence is really nothing more than a stubborn refusal to admit they were wrong and we're finally allowed to have our police back which should never have been replaced to start with.

Speed cameras as a null solution is a prime example of it if ain't broke ..don't fix it.

Give us back our real police so they can go back to doing their jobs and make a real dent in illegal driving such as drink drive and stop this pretence that cameras are any kind of real solution to road safety.

The average national casualty reduction figure shows less than a 7% improvement since 1997 while the two countys in the UK who don't operate speed cameras have a 15% and 40% reduction ...so get over it, it doesn't matter what you try, speed cameras don't work, they never have worked and they never will work.

I don't mean to put too fine a point on it, but, if I walk into my kitchen and slip on some liquid on the floor and bang my head on the kitchen work top, if I then cellotape a scatter cushion to the worktop at the point of impact, over the next three years what percentage of accidents will the cushion prevent?

Yes, it's a ridiculous comment, but no less ridiculous than the speed camera partnerships claims.

It isn't cushion that's prevented the accident, it's the fact that I mopped up the liquid I slipped on, just like when you erect a camera, it isn't the camera, it's the fact that they resurfaced the previously slippery road and spruced up all the road lining, signage and lights.

Cameras are a con, everyone knows they're a con, no one is fooled because we all know the only people who jump on these blogs to support cameras is the poor souls in the PR departments of these partnerships.

Speed cameras cover less than 1% of Britains roads, which even to the brain dead means that 99% of Britains roads have no cover at all since the police disappeared, there are virtually no mobile police spotting drunks, the illegals, no mot, stolen, no insurance, just so silly polaroid on a pole that takes a photo if you travel past it beyond a preset threshold.

One of the irony's is, even though the partnerships took over a hundred million pounds from Britains drivers last year, 95% of whom where less than 10mph over whatever limit was in force on that particular road, it cost a hundred million pounds just to run them, especially when you factor in wasted police man- hours in cracking rings of organised crime with people offering to take points for a fee, tracking down drivers who use fake documents, addresses and number plates, 200,000 of which are never found in London alone, let alone countrywide.

Not to mention abject incompetence with over a quarter of a million faulty convictions in this country this year alone due to operator incompetence which have resulted i

continued.............

Not to mention abject incompetence with over a quarter of a million faulty convictions in this country this year alone due to operator incompetence which have resulted in dismissal of staff from several countys and investigations from the independant police complaints commission.

Lastly, lets be honest about it, speed cameras aren't catching the right people, if they were, there'd be no need to hide the things and there wouldn't be endless rounds of propaganda every other week.

The placebo hasn't worked, those who know how to dodge cameras continue to do so and the only people really complaining about speed cameras are the ones who can clearly witness drivers totally ignoring the presence of cameras, the people who're getting away with it simply can't belive their good fortune.

Speed camera fines continue to decline as the unwary learn to adapt to them which the partnerhips claim is because millions less are speeding, if that is really true, they why are there still in excess of three thousand fatalities every year, which give or take a couple of hundred is how it's been since the late 90's?

Give us back our policy, in the countys who don't use them, they have a far higher success rate in casualty reduction, put our police back on the road before you stupid people get anyone else killed just because you're too stubborn to admit speed cameras simply don't work.

There is only one question that really matters...

If the government were paying inexcess of a hundred million pounds a year of their own (tax payers) money, instead of millions of fined motorists who've by far the majority have never had accidents in their lives or any previous reason to be criminalised on a policy that showed a less than 7% per annum improvment in road casualty reduction and even then that 7% improvement is subject to speculation because the motor manufacturers are quite keen to point out that they think at least 5% of the improvment is due to improvments to modern vehicles with testing like Euro NCAP.

Do we honestly think the government would be so cavalier with it's spending on this unelected, self righteous group of quangos? ..obviously not.

How many millions of drivers have you prosectuted less than 10mph over an arbitrary limit since you've been in power Labour? have you forgetten that those drivers have a vote?..do you honestly think you're going to get re-elected with this amongst many shambolic failures in policy.

Give us back our traffic police, they used to be the envy of the world, because they were very very good at their jobs and a lot fewer people would be dead today, if people like Alistair Darling hadn't signed up to speed camera proliferation during his time at the DfT on his way to his job as 'chancellor' because I'm afraid, he doesn't care about peoples lives in accidents, he's a bean counter, just like Brown and the only game in town is money.