 |
THE GUARDIAN |
 |
|
COMMENT
|
|
The
roadhog right cannot deny it:
speed cameras work The government should be proud of its record on reducing road deaths Polly
Toynbee The roadhog right is
a peculiar beast: its
conviction that freedom to
drive fast is God-given
inhabits the same quirk in
rightwing brains as their
belief in freedom not to pay
taxes. So speed cameras are to
them the perfect devilish red
plot against the innocent
speeding middle classes. The Times, Mail, Sun,
Telegraph and the rest have
been foaming at the mouth over
speed cameras for the last
year - despite, or because of,
the cameras' ever-greater
success at slowing down
drivers, collecting fines and
cutting road deaths. Yesterday
their road rage knew no bounds
as the home secretary
defiantly proposed a £5-£30
surcharge on top of existing
fixed penalties for drivers.
It was a rare moment when
David Blunkett faced down a
populist campaign. The extra fines will
go to a fund offering support
for crime victims with
much-needed money for Victim
Support, rape crisis centres,
women's refuges and an
ombudsman for victims and
witnesses who feel badly
treated. Brake, the road
safety campaign, is delighted
that there will be money at
last for the bereaved of
traffic accidents, who are
often left with no practical
help once the police have
delivered their terrible news.
The wrath of the roadhog right
has been most enjoyable: after
all, they are usually the ones
complaining that all the
sympathy goes to understanding
criminals too much and the
victims too little. But then they are not
rational beasts; they want to
drive fast, end of story. The
cacophony of bluster about
speed-camera highway robbery
is wonderfully contrary from
the very same papers that hype
up public terror over any tiny
new risk they can find -
except for the one clear and
present danger that faces us
all every day of our lives,
the killer car. Forget toxic salmon,
death-dealing deodorants,
lethal neon lighting and the
thousand other front-page
shock-horrors that offer us a
daily fright. This is what to
fear: you stand a one in 200
chance of dying horribly and
brutally on the roads. (It
says so in bold type on the
back of the Highway Code.)
Every year 3,600 die, and
around 40,000 suffer serious
injury. Roads are the biggest
killer of 12- to 16-year-olds.
Now compare that to
the mere 800 who have died of
Sars worldwide, causing global
panic and economic calamity.
Road accidents are not acts of
God, but a man-made horror
that can and is being reduced
with man-made measures by this
government. It is one of
Labour's big success stories -
just about their only
transport success. A target to
cut death and injury by 40% by
2010 had already reached one
third of that by the end of
2002. Two-thirds of the target
to reduce child deaths by 50%
has also already been reached
years early. But road deaths fail
to frighten; they have never
been high politics, compared
with GM, mad cow or cancer
waiting times. It is
extraordinary how little this
splattering of human body
parts on the roads frightens
the very same newspapers that
love to terrify their readers.
But if any of their scares
from obscure, unrepeated tests
on rats had a death rate like
the roads, there would be mass
hysteria. What's more, if most
of the deaths were
preventable, yet the negligent
government did nothing, it
would cause instant regime
change at Westminster. But cars are in a
zone somewhere outside the
normal rules of politics,
panic and blame. The bizarre
anti-speed-camera campaign
sweeps along usually sensible
commentators in its car-mad
wake. Their outrage focuses on
the idea that this is a new
"stealth tax" to be
paid by "motorists whose
offences are usually
victimless". The Mail
leader yesterday stormed:
"Isn't it time the police
focused on catching violent
criminals rather than acting
as uniformed tax
collectors?" Simon Jenkins calls
speed cameras the Dick Turpins
of the highways, nabbing
law-abiding middle-class folk
doing a couple of miles over
the speed limit on empty
straight stretches at night
just to land cash for the
chancellor (42% of road deaths
are at night). As for
"victimless"
speeding, some might not think
so, including parents of the
200 children killed annually -
the equivalent of more than 13
Dunblanes every year. The irrefutable
proven facts are these: higher
speeds mean more crashes and
more deaths. A pedestrian
struck by a car going 20mph
has a 90% chance of survival.
At 30mph, that chance of
surviving drops to 50%, and at
every mph over that it drops
very rapidly, reaching just a
10% life chance at 40mph. Has
every driver in the land
speeded at some time? Yes,
probably. Should we? No. Is it
bang to rights if we get
caught? Of course. Does
catching people make them
drive slower in future?
Certainly. Speed cameras have
cut deaths by 35%, despite
spurious arguments that they
are all in the wrong places,
or some outrageous abuse of
statistics purporting to show
that they actually increase
road deaths. Widely quoted
factoids from the drivers'
lobbies include some straight
untruths. The RAC claims those
caught by cameras are
middle-aged male company car
drivers doing high mileage,
whereas young drivers cause
most accidents. The figures
show it is these same
middle-aged company car men
who are also 50% more likely
to be involved in accidents
than others, even after their
longer road hours are
discounted. Overconfident men
cause crashes, old and young,
of all car-owning classes.
Another fox to be shot is the
claim that cameras are a big
tax revenue spinner. Local
police and councils only keep
enough to cover the cost of
the cameras, the Treasury only
gets a small surplus; £73m
came in from camera fines last
year and there was only a
measly £7m for the Treasury.
Hardly worth inciting roadhog
fury, if cameras didn't save
lives. The government is
entirely right to ignore the
noise of the drivers - and the
Tories and Lib Dems look
cynically opportunistic for
trying to attach themselves to
the anti-camera brigade. They
plainly haven't examined the
six main polls taken on this
subject, which show
consistently that
three-quarters of the public
support speed cameras. That's just as well,
for this highly efficient
policing is about to be
greatly expanded. Following
pilot trials, a new generation
of digital cameras can catch
3,000 car number plates an
hour, automatically checking
them against police computers,
ready to despatch nearby
police cars after millions of
unlicensed, uninsured or
disqualified drivers, as well
as stolen cars and suspected
criminals. In the pilots it
has lead to a tenfold increase
in arrests, with large amounts
of stolen property recovered
and car crime cut sharply. The Treasury wouldn't
put up the money for it - they
increasingly demand all new
initiatives must be
self-financing. So the new
higher fixed penalties will
pay for new cameras that are
becoming one of the most
effective and efficient forms
of policing. All this is cause
for celebration: Britain now
has one of the lowest road
accident and death rates in
Europe.
|