 Radar-based detector: illegal  GPS-based detector: OK |
Graduated fixed penalties for traffic offences and the banning of laser and radar detectors could become law today.
The Road Safety Bill, which goes before the UK's House of Commons today for its final reading, will introduce a number of provisions relating to speeding.
- Graduated fixed penalty tickets -- six-point fixed penalties for some speed camera offences, two of which will mean a default six-month ban under totting-up.
- Re-training courses for speeding offenders -- courts will be able to offer those convicted of speeding to take a retraining course, paid for by the miscreant.
- Ban speed camera jammers and detectors -- that rationale is that: "devices which interfere with or detect the proper functioning of such cameras have only one purpose: to tell drivers when they can break speed limits and get away with it. This is unacceptable, it prevents the police from carrying out their duties, and is a danger to other law-abiding road users." GPS-based devices remain legal.
- Increased penalty for not identifying a driver -- the maximum penalty for failing to provide information about a driver's identity is less than the maximum for a speeding offence. That's going to change.
- Power to grant exemptions from speed limits -- those that drive emergency vehicles must get training before being allowed to break speed limits.
- Other provisions include the pilot introduction of a rest area, like the French 'aires' on autoroutes, better anti-clocking measures, and more policing of foreign drivers who break traffic laws.
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But according to road safety campaign Safe Speed, MPs will vote for the bill "without ever knowing what thresholds may be required to invoke the six-point penalty. That is because the table of speeds and penalties does not yet exist. The Road Safety Bill empowers the Secretary of State to create and amend the table without further reference to Parliament."
According to Safe Speed, which described the situation as "astonishing", there are practical problems developing such a table of penalties.
The campaign said: "Suppose the six-point penalty applies above 45mph in a 30mph zone and in a particular case the police equipment recorded 46mph. With such close margins, it could not be proven in a court of law that the six-point offence had actually been committed - the police equipment may have been out by a couple of miles per hour."
As a result, said the campaign, the government sidestepped the problem by not revealing the table of penalties or the associated problems to MPs, although the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has raised the problem with Department for Transport (DfT).
Campaign founder Paul Smith said: "It is absurd that the speed camera programme will be strengthened just ten days after official figures revealed that only 1 in 20 crashes involve exceeding a speed limit. The speed camera programme has failed to improve road safety -- neither road deaths nor hospitalisations have fallen as expected. In fact we're ten years behind -- and moving backwards.
"I wonder how many MPs are aware that they are being bamboozled by a defective road safety policy? Department for Transport has long deceived the public, Parliament and probably themselves about the effectiveness of the speed camera programme. I guess the habits of a decade are hard to break, even when the evidence is overwhelming. And it is.
"Drivers have clearly had enough of speed cameras. They haven't made the road safer, and that's hardly surprising because massive resources are being focused on a tiny part of the road safety problem. It's time to pull the plug.
"It's clearly important that no one should drive too fast. Despite exceeding the speed limit being commonplace, most of us never drive too fast. This is because speed limits do not give an adequate definition of 'too fast'. On one occasion 30mph may be way too fast, but on another 40mph may be perfectly reasonable. Speed limits are actually a proxy measure for the desired behaviour - and that's where the problem lies. We have become obsessed with the proxy to the point of forgetting the desired behaviour."
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