Published in Wolverhampton "Express & Star", Mar 97
 
				27-3-97
	Dear Sir,

		The report in tonights Express & Star regarding speed cameras missed the point completely. For a start, it was headlined "Speed, the real killer". What rubbish! BAD DRIVING is the real killer. Bad driving can include an element of excess speed, certainly, but it's going too fast for the situation which causes danger, which isn't the same as exceeding the speed limit. Cameras can't distinguish between safe driving and dangerous driving, only when a driver is over an arbitrary speed.

	Take the car in the photograph you printed, for example. He's doing 62 in a 40 limit, true, but as far as I can see he has good visibility, it's daylight, (12.27 pm, according to the camera), he's on a dual carriageway, the road appears to be dry, and there is no other vehicle in sight. (I use that road occasionally, and I've often wondered why the limit isn't at least 50). Apart from the speed, this driver seems to be driving fairly safely.

	What, though, if he'd been doing 40mph, in the pouring rain, in rush hour traffic in the dark, right on the bumper of the car in front, with his mobile phone in one hand and the other hand angrily flashing his headlights? He's an accident looking for somewhere to happen, but the camera would ignore him because he's not exceeding the magic 40. He's quite likely to get away with it, because now they've got the camera doing their job for them, the only copper you'll see on that road will be the one changing the film.

	Letting dangerous drivers get away with it, and going after soft targets (preferably without having to leave their nice warm offices) is not, to my mind, efficient policing.

	Modern thinking seems to be "It doesn't matter how badly people drive, as long as we slow them down everything will be all right". The opposite can be the case. The A34 from the M42 towards Solihull used to flow fairly freely, but since they installed cameras everyone is terrified of going over 40, and the traffic bunches up so badly that the last time I was there I was actually frightened. Being an experienced HGV driver, and having passed the Advanced test on a car and an artic, it takes a lot to frighten me.

	This "speed is everything" mentality has also led to the fitting of 56mph speed limiters to heavy lorries in the last few years. Since they became compulsory on lorries and coaches, the number of lorry drivers killed has gone up by 24%, and the number of coach drivers killed has gone up by 67%. Does slower equal safer?

	We should be concentrating our efforts on DANGEROUS driving, not just picking on those drivers who exceed an arbitrary limit. Speed doesn't NECESSARILY kill.

		Yours Faithfully,



			Chris Lamb.