Musing on the whining shites on the radio complaining about speed cameras being a “stealth tax”. Oops did I show a bias?

The attitude mystified me at first. My gut response was: if you don’t want to get fined, DON’T SPEED. IT’S ALREADY ILLEGAL. Don’t complain about getting charged for doing something illegal.

I’ve been reluctant to blog this one, as there are so many facets and gotchas to the subject that it won’t be covered satisfactorily in a single post and will likely end in much wailing and gnashing of teeth. But I didn’t have any other thoughts even half-finished today so I thought I’d have a stab at this one.

The most amazing thing to me is the way the police are now at the mercy of public opinion and feel they have to sell speed cameras (erm, safety cameras) to us.

Oh, we only put them on accident blackspots, and we paint them bright yellow so you can drive recklessly when you know you’re not going to get caught.

Translation: speeding is fine except in these particular locations.

Correction: SPEEDING IS ALREADY ILLEGAL. DON’T DO IT AND YOU WON’T PAY FINES

What about the poor souls who don’t realise they are speeding? There is a very real issue here, in that “the regulations” forbid putting up 30 MPH signs in a 30 limit (except where it’s the end of a 20 limit) this has an economic justification: 30 IS the national speed limit in built-up areas, so it is a waste of money to erect signs to that effect. I think this is misguided and local authorities should be allowed to put up reinforcing signs where they know people can tend to speed (dual carriageway? wide straight road entering outskirts of town?)

Why don’t speed cameras stop people speeding. Here’s a psychological mechanism by which we are encouraged to speed: If we don’t speed, we don’t get caught. But that guy’s speeding and he’s beaten me through the lights. That guy’s speeding and he’s passed this dirty great lorry I’m stuck behind. Speeding has clear and visible benefits. It takes an unusual or even abnormal amount of self-control not to speed. So most of us do. When the camera gets us, it’s SO much more unfair, because what is the alternative? Willingly making yourself weaker than your fellow road user? Allowing people to OVERTAKE you?

OK so I descended into satire by the end of that paragraph, but these petty insecurities are there, in the little shrew brain buried deep within your complex human one. It’s called peer pressure. Everybody’s doing 80 on the motorways. I drive a small car and much below 70 makes me very nervous as there are more hazards approaching in my mirrors than in front of me where I can see clearly. Answer? Accelerate. Put the majority of hazards in your windscreen and deal with them.

Now put that all on hold, and imagine an alternative world, where that peer pressure is removed. You see a 50 sign and you slow gently to 50 MPH as do all the people around you. you don’t feel anxious, weak, disadvantaged, insecure, but cosy, co-operating with the other traffic in patiently tolerating this minor speed reduction.

Seems to me the key item to deal with is the perceived fairness of the situation. Eliminating peer pressure is one important component. How do you stop people speeding?

ENFORCE SPEED LIMITS

If you knew that speeding would cost you money, you wouldn’t do it. There wouldn’t be any sense of injustice in being passed by someone who was speeding, you’d thing “poor sod, that’s going to cost him an arm and a leg”. For all I care, put the police on a bonus scheme the more speeding tickets they issue. Let them keep 10%.

IF YOU DON’T SPEED YOU WON’T GET FINED

There’s scope for corruption there, but less than you might think, since the police don’t get to choose where the speed limits and signs go. This brings us to the second important component of perceived fairness:

FAIR LIMITS AND CLEAR SIGNS

20 limits outside schools should apply only at times when children are present, and have a light to indicate when the 20 limit does NOT apply. Why “not”? Because if the light fails, you don’t want people to be caught speeding without knowing they were speeding.

Add 10-15 MPH to speed limits on motorways and trunk roads

Allow 30 sign to be repeated where local authorities deem appropriate

There would be a LOT of debugging to do with the nation’s signs. Our current culture allows us to disregard signs we think are not justified. We would need a channel to report issues with signs, preferably where we could find out the progress of our suggestion. Hmm… where can we- oo look! the internet!

If we were to put as much effort into improving the placement of our speed limits as we currently do at haranguing the police about enforcing them, it’d be looking very good in a year or two, and near defect-free in five.

HOW DO YOU ENFORCE IT?

Many more speed cameras. Call them speed cameras not safety cameras. IF YOU DO NOT SPEED, YOU WILL NOT PAY. A system like the P�age on french autoroutes: you take a ticket on the on-ramp, and you present it on the off-ramp. If that ticket made its journey too fast, you sped. This is far safer than a speed camera since it reduces your average speed. of course this can be abused by stopping at services for a meal to increase your time, but then prices at motorway services are punitive anyway.

HOW DO YOU IMPLEMENT THIS?

This would involve a culture change in the British driver. The Brit mentality values fairness above the law (visit the USA if you disagree). A phased implementation could easily descend into chaos, whereas an instant implementation would be impossible. I think zones should be created in which the new rules apply, and all signs within that area simply be tagged with a red rectangle with STRICT written in it. This could be applied to traffic lights today, but that’s a separate blog entry.