[Escapee]

Originally Posted by Chris T

In areas with an established road safety problem, there is no doubt that a well-placed and highly visible speed camera can make that section of road safer. I'm not sure anyone was arguing otherwise.

The problems, as I see them, are:

1. For years, cameras were battleship grey and often hidden behind trees/signposts. This sat very uneasily with claims that they were 'safety' cameras. If their aim was deterrent, they ought to have been visible in order to deter, not hidden in order to catch out. This has now changed but in PR terms, the damage is done. The cameras' reputation is one of covert revenue-generating device. The blame for this lies at the doors of the police, local councils and, for not putting its foot down sooner, the Government.

2. Speed limit policy in the UK is muddled to say the least. Traffic police are generally agreed that motorway speed limits should generally be 80mph but the Government is resisting this - not on road safety grounds but for environmental reasons, due to increased fuel consumption at this speed. Thus we have a situation where you will not get pulled over for doing 80mph or less, even if you pass a patrol car, and even though you are technically breaking the law. Human police officers are capable of judging road conditions and establish whether someone is driving safely at this speed or if conditions demand caution. A set of roadside sensors would simply record an average speed in excess of the limiit and blindly issue a fine.

On rural roads the situation is equally muddled. It is not unheard of for a council to reduce the speed limit to 30 as a road passes through a village, but then not to increase it again on the way out. The reason? Because there's another village 2 miles up the road where the speed limit needs to be reduced again, and the council doesn't want the hassle and expense of changing the limit up and down again. It's hardly surprising then that drivers often find speed limits unreasonable and learn to hold them in contempt.

To sum all this up, the enforcement of speed limits in this country faces a major PR problem. Existing laws are passed and enforced in an apparently random fashion, bringing the laws into disrepute. And disreputable laws are bad laws as people just don't follow them. It's fine for the chief constable of North Wales to talk about making speeding as socially unacceptable as drink driving, but first he has to get people to understand that the law is reasonable, and is being applied and enforced fairly. He might find this approach to be even more effective than his camera campaign.

To relate this back to the black box in cars issue, I'm still opposed to that, not because of its aim to check my speed but because I do not accept that the State has the right to monitor and record every move its citizens make, except perhaps in dire national emergencies.

I agree with much of what you say, local councils should not be responsible for setting limits or being in resposible for anything to do with road safety at all. It's time a national department took responsibility of the whole issue from spped camera to road humps. I complained to the Highway Authority about a very dangerous set of traffic lights installed about two years ago at a T-junction, the local idiot council only placed traffic lights on one side of the road. Lorries often park on the pavement to deliver to the shops, resulting in the one and only traffic light being obscured. It is all down to saving cost and crossing their fingers that no one gets killed. The highway authority said "we are not responsible for that road anymore, speak to your local council" I was never able to find any rules that authorities have to follow.

Most of the dangerous junctions in my area are ones that have been installed with new road schemes within the last 6 years, if you go five miles down the road to a different council area the speed limits are 40mph but similar roads are 30mph in my town. They have placed 20MPH signs at each end of one road, if you come onto it from a sidestreet you have no idea and the police are there with the speed gun often. The signs are actually right on the T junction, exactly in the place where you are concentrating on traffic and not looking up in the sky to the signs.

If these local authorities were really worried about road safety accidents, deaths etc, they would adequately sign these sort of roads and paint the limit on the road surface at regular intervals. Some road calming schemes in my area are downright shocking, as they have introduced some very dangerous hazzards. The council clowns have recently placed two bus stops, not the pull-in type directly opposite each other. This causes chaos as there always seems to be two buses there at the same time with the windows down chatting to one another.

If they want the roads safer, an independant body needs to take control of every road in the country and set the rules for councils to adhere to.

Anyway back to fitting black boxes.

what about cars that have 6 volts systems! I have a couple.

What about cars with no battery! I have one flywheel magneto only.