It seems the state government has decided to reveal all the possible locations of mobile speed cameras for the first time.
I know other juristictions have done this kind of thing before, but I don’t quite see how this is a good thing. Doesn’t it just give lead-foot motorists (and there’s plenty of them out there) the all-clear to drive fast where they think there won’t be any cameras? Mind you there’s so many of them you’d have to be a brainiac to remember where they all are.
12 replies on “Zooooooom!”
There’s this whole argument in Britain that speed cameras are only there to raise money, to which I always answer, “So don’t speed, then you’ll bankrupt the b*****ds”
There is no excuse for constantly speeding, it puts me and mine (and everybody else) at risk of accident, and it’s selfish.
Of course, I know that the one time I fail to notice a posted speed limit is the time I get caught by one of these cameras, but if I failed to read the road properly, then it will have been my fault.
Actually, this is the best way to have speed cameras. If people know where they are, then they won’t speed there, and if the places are the sort of place where you want people not to speed (like outside Schools, etc) then they work!
However – current research seem to suggest that this actually has a reverse effect on road safety, as people are so busy obsessing about their speed that they don’t pay attention to the child running onto the street. See:
http://www.itv.com/news/1956917.html
Ken, I don’t buy that. I’ve never got a speeding ticket, but I don’t believe obsess about my speed to the point where I risk an accident.
I know it doesn’t count for everybody, but in the past, the people I’ve heard complaining loudest about speeding tickets are those who habitually speed (one guy would manage to get the points put onto his wife’s licence), and IMHO deserve to get caught.
(Tongue in cheek)
But speeding actually saves lives….
This morning radio airwaves were full of people trying to argue and justify that they did not deserve their speeding fine, in spite of conceeding that they were speeding. ‘I can’t watch the speedo all the time’. ‘It is dangerous to take my eyes of the road’. ‘I was at the bottom of a steep hill’. ‘It is a calibration problem with my speedo’. It is a bit radical, but get used to driving just below the speed limit if you don’t feel confident enough in your driving skills to take your eyes off the road to check the speedo.
I second Andrew’s suggestion. If you cannot look at the speedo whilst you are driving then you shouldn’t be driving. I also think that radio stations shouldn’t be able to broadcast where they are. Funny thing I have noticed driving along Dynon Road is that the majority of cars exceed the 60 limit but don’t drive up to the 70 limit when it changes around Kensington. Funny lot us drivers.
Ditto Pete. And Andrew.
Publish a list of speed camera sites and suddenly cameras will be required everywhere. At present, with cameras able to be anywhere at any time, the idea is that people will slow down because of the constant chance of being caught. They don’t know when or where.
Publishing the list will ruin that theory unless the list contains so many lengths of road that there are few places in the state where there would be no camera.
Hopefully the list is that large.
The list I received a couple of years ago was abou 4,500 I think :-) It’s been circulating on the ‘net anyway.
People need to be trained that driving a car is a privilege, not a right, and we’d be half way there….
Wasn’t publishing the list a recent Liberal party promise? Labor matching it would kill it as an issue.
so if the aim is to slow peopel down and by publishing this list, people will slow down, then isnt the aim being achieved ?
also, 1/3rd of all road fatalities occur below 55kmh – so is speed really this great bogeyman ?
How do you figure it slows people down? I think it slows them down only where they know there might be a camera, not everywhere else.
So, 2/3 of fatalities occur over 55kmh?