Jun 15 2007
Speed cameras do not produce safe roads
Paul Smith and his safe speed campaign has done a great job in highlighting the folly of relying for our road safety policy on spoeed cameras. The latest road death figures are too high, and show we no longer are doing a better job than other countries in bringing deaths down.
Speed cameras were never going to make our roads safer, as more than 9 out of 10 accidents have nothing to do with speeding. More accidents occur at road junctions. The usual cause is careless driving combined with poorly designed roads and junctions.
Our safest roads are our fastest roads - the motorways - because their design builds safety in by segregating traffic going in different directions, and by ??banning pedestrians and cycles from the carriageway - just as they are banned from railway tracks.
Mixed user roads will be less???? safe, but more could be done to give pedestrians and cyclists their own space and to keep traffic going in different directions apart.
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
I would like to disagree with the comment in this article that says speed causes only 1 out of 10 accidents. I would say that relative speed is the cause of most accidents. People drive too fast and too aggressively around towns and junctions although technically they are not breaking the speed limit they are still driving too fast.
And also cars and lorries travelling in built up areas at high speeds (often next to footpaths) cause more noise than cars travelling at 30mph. Let’s not forget about the ‘environment’ but we must also consider our local environment.
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