Money is wasted on cameras
Vehicle-activated signs, costing less than £1,000 a year to run, compared with £50,000 for speed cameras, have been shown to be more effective?
In January 2003, the Department for Transport published TRL548, confirming costs of £5,000 to install a vehicle activated sign, with minimal running costs, and reductions in speed and accidents rather greater than provided by cameras. And for reasons best known to itself, then extended the speed camera programme and ignored these signs.
Worse, in 2006 Dr Stephen Ladyman submitted DfT figures to the Commons Select Committee purporting to show that the cost of a camera was £7,500, a figure which turned out to be for installation only and to exclude the £32,000 cost of the camera and the tens of thousands of pounds for operating it.
On the basis of these figures, in October 2006 the committee called for more cameras.
It is vitally important that all involved in deciding road safety policies at local level be aware that the DfT figures are seriously misleading, that vehicle-activated signs provide far, far greater benefit for the same expenditure and that there is no reason whatever to spend £50,000 for a camera at one site when the same money could pay for signs at 50 sites.
Each of which is likely to provide greater benefit than the one camera.
I Francis, Hampshire
