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A confidential letter sent to police forces and local authorities reveals
just how rattled those who run the nation's speed camera system have become
at charges that their policy has failed to reduce Britain's road accident
figures.
The letter, from Richard Brunstrom, who describes himself as "Chair of the
Association of Chief Police Officers Roads Policing Business Area",
instructs those involved in operating speed cameras - this year expected to
raise at least £120 million from two million motorists - that they must on
no account respond to any requests for factual information from Paul Smith,
a road safety expert whose website has made him one of the system's most
powerful critics.
Mr Smith's offence, according to Mr Brunstrom, the chief constable of North
Wales, is that his "sole intent seems to be to discredit Government
policy"; and that he has not only "inundated" the Department for Transport
(three enquiries) and police forces with requests for information, but
published their replies on the internet.
Mr Brunstrom is also concerned that dozens of serving police officers have
contacted Mr Smith to express their own concern at the way reliance on the
cameras has become a substitute for a road safety policy which, until 10
years ago, was internationally acclaimed as the most successful in the world.
Two years ago Mr Smith, a professional engineer and passionate advocate of
safe driving, decided to investigate the official claims made for speed
cameras. What he found so shocked him that he decided to launch a website
(www.safespeed.org.uk) to challenge the claims.
"Until 1993," he says, "Britain had a road safety culture second to none.
For nearly 30 years we had seen a dramatic and steady reduction in road
accidents, in which sensible policing was a significant factor.
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Then the whole policy changed to ever-increasing reliance on cameras. All
the evidence shows that this has sharply slowed the fall in the accident
rate, and that, in some respects, the distraction of cameras actually makes
the roads more dangerous."
What particularly shocked Mr Smith, however, was the wholesale distortion
of scientific evidence, which was then used to support the case for
cameras, such as the endlessly-repeated mantra that excessive speed causes
a third of all accidents (the Government's own figures show this is the
chief cause of only 5- 7 per cent of accidents). But when he politely asked
the police and officials for evidence to support their claims, he was
astonished at their persistent inability to provide it.
The more that Mr Smith reported this refusal to discuss the issue, and the
further he developed his scientific critique of the policy, the more
irritated Mr Brunstrom became - leading to the latest order that no one
involved in operating the speed cameras must have any contact with him.
Only one county in England and Wales does not now boast one of the "safety
camera partnerships" which yield ever-greater income for police forces,
local councils and magistrates courts (one camera alone on the M11 is said
to generate £840,000 a year). The exception is Durham, whose chief
constable, Paul Garvin, remains an outspoken opponent of the camera policy,
and whose county's accident record is 30 per cent below the national average.
Mr Smith's campaign has been backed by two Conservative front bench
spokesmen, Tim Collins and Damian Green. On Friday, a Daily Telegraph poll
revealed that the public agrees with Mr Smith by two to one that speed
cameras do not reduce traffic accidents; and by nearly three to one that
their chief purpose is to raise revenue rather than improve road safety.
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