'Safety Camera Partnerships' are spreading faster than the SARS virus, and every one of them seems to have its own ideas about the livery to use on its mobile speed camera vans - nicknamed 'Talivans'.
 
Drivers are faced with a confusing mish-mash of markings and colours. Yellow, orange, red, and blue colours can be seen painted in lines, diagonal stripes, checks and on panels.
 
Some Talivans are clearly marked as "POLICE", others just have "Safety Camera Partnership" in deliberately small writing.
 
The result of this chaos is confusion and danger.
 
ABD Road Safety Spokesman Mark McArthur-Christie explains:

"Many of our members have reported seeing drivers panic braking on sight of these vans. More worryingly still, we had a recent report of panic braking on the M20 in Kent, where a van with red/yellow stripes on the back and amber roof lights was parked on the hard shoulder, it was attended by two men in yellow jackets using something mounted on a tripod. It was only on passing the van that the word 'surveyors' was readable. An accident is highly likely to be caused by panic braking, and it would be absurd if an 'innocent' van were to be the cause of such an accident."

The use of amber roof lights on police vehicles is extremely dangerous as drivers are being conditioned into braking whenever they see a parked van fitted with amber lights. We believe that Lancashire and West Yorkshire Police, to their credit, use blue lights; and Lancashire also use full Police blue-yellow check livery on their Talivans.
 

A Lancashire Talivan in full police livery and equipped with blue lights. Why don't all Talivans look like this?   Photo courtesy of speedcam.co.uk

The ABD condemns the use of Talivans that are not clearly marked as police vehicles, and demands that consistent police blue-yellow check livery and blue roof lights be used throughout the country for such vehicles.
 
ABD Chairman Brian Gregory added:

"We'd like to know why Talivans have amber roof lights at all when these are never used, even when the van is parked in a dangerous location. The police claim that these vans aren't there to catch people, but to make them slow down. So why don't all Talivans have blue roof lights which are switched on when the vehicle is genuinely being used for road safety purposes?"