London’s Safety Camera Partnership plans to install speed cameras at 25 new sites next year, claiming its cautious approach to speed enforcement has been vindicated.
The number of people killed and serious injured (KSI) at camera sites in the capital has fallen by ‘more than 50% – well above the national average,’ according to a report to the ~Association of London Government~'s transport and environment committee.
Nationally, speed cameras have been shown to reduce KSIs by 42%, although London’s figures are not for the full three-year monitoring period. Led by ~Transport for London~ and the Metropolitan Police, the LSCP attributes its success to use of tougher criteria than the Government’s four KSI minimum over three years. ‘Cameras are only installed at sites where speed has been the primary cause of collisions,’ a TfL spokesman said. Cameras were ‘a last resort’ in a holistic road safety strategy. Although national criteria will be relaxed from April 2007, the LSCP intends to evaluate on the old basis ‘until all sites on the list have been exhausted’. With around 300 meeting the national test, that would take many years, critics have pointed out.
‘Twenty-five cameras is nowhere near enough,’ said ~Jenny Jones~ the mayor’s ‘road safety ambassador’ and Green party assembly member. She blamed lack of funding and political will. Last year’s government freeze on partnership recruitment had hit London particularly hard, given it had a backlog of casualty hotspots four times the national average, she said.
Long-running problems with back-office administration were being tackled, but still hampered enforcement. Only 17% of London’s 453 cameras were working at any one time. The partnership claims its ‘graded deployment strategy’ using dummy units which flash speeding drivers allows it to target sites ‘where there is still a KSI problem’, and concentrate on making more drivers pay up. With new digital units, it expects to offer speed-awareness courses instead of fines to 100,000 drivers identified as marginally-above limits.
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