Speed Camera work continues

19 May 2010, 17:32

The new Transport Secretary has hinted he may end 'the war on motorists.' by stopping government funding of Speed Cameras. Road safety groups have objected; this is the statement the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership gave Heart

With regards to the recent change of Government, the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership (along with other similar Partnerships across the country) will be carrying on with 'business as usual' until further directions are received from the new coalition Government.

In Sussex, this means that we will be continuing the program of digital conversion on existing fixed camera sites, whilst also carrying out mobile speed enforcement checks at areas of need and maintaining our red light cameras. We are also continuing to offer Speed Awareness Courses to those individuals detected travelling slightly over the posted speed limit as an educational alternative to points and a fine.

Each year, we evaluate the number of individuals killed and seriously injured at our fixed,mobile and red light camera sites across Sussex. In the past 12 months, we have seen a 100% reduction in the number of individuals killed at fixed camera sites, and a 57% reduction in individuals killed at mobile camera sites.

Furthermore, we use something called the Highways Economics Note to calculate the benefits to society arising from the prevention of road accidents and casualties. In the past twelve months, we have calculated that our safety camera programme has saved the Sussex economy over £42million.
For your information, these figures are calculated by looking at the number of individuals injured on the roads and extrapolating the cost to society in insurance claims, the cost of each call-out to the emergency services, the cost of rehabilitating seriously injured individuals, lost working time due to injury etc.

Our educational programme also continues unabated until further direction is given. An innovative package (ROUTES) aiming to reduce death and injury amongst young people has just been put out to pilot; the COSTS business driver package continues to grow with increasing take-up across the Sussex business sphere and campaigns such as Embrace Life (our seat belt campaign launched back in January which has been nominated for two prestigious awards and has had over 9.7million online views to date) continue to provide educational interventions to road users throughout the counties.