Clause 17 - Speed assessment equipment detection devices
Road Safety Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Christopher Chope (Shadow Minister, Environment and Transport; Christchurch, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman is facing up to the fact that the speed cameras are of limited use. I thought that he and his hon. Friends and the Minister were arguing that they were of use. Obviously, as I described earlier, people slow down at the point where a camera is if they know that it is there. The purpose of installing a camera is to reduce the number of accidents at its location, and in many cases a camera will secure such a reduction.
The point that I made in the earlier debate to which the hon. Gentleman referred was that too many people now regard speed cameras as a substitute for the general law on speed limits. They think that they have to comply with a speed limit only where there is a camera. This matter is about the psychology of enforcing speed limits; it is about finding appropriate limits; and it is about the reduction, which we have greatly criticised and continue to criticise, in the number of police officers who patrol the roads.
The principal point that I raise in the amendment is that if motorists are enabled more easily to identify an accident blackspot, that must contribute to road safety rather than undermining it. That would be the effect of the amendment.