![[ABD Logo]](images/logo8050.gif)
The Association of British Drivers
Penalties & Prosecutions
N.B. The figures on this page come from the Home Office, so cover England & Wales only.
Data for Scotland is recorded slightly differently, and can be found under "Criminal proceedings in Scottish Courts" within Scottish Executive Publications.
Northern Ireland only adopted speed cameras in 2002.
Speed cameras have been the source of a great deal of argument about whether their true role is to generate revenue or save lives. On this page, we examine the actual data.
The government tell us that "speed kills". They use this claim to justify more speed cameras. In recent years, the number of speed cameras in England & Wales has increased massively, to at least 4500, with some reports stating as many as 6300.
As a result, the number of fixed penalty notices issued, and prosecutions carried out, has increased dramatically to well over a million per year.
'Safety' Camera Partnerships repeatedly claim that their speed cameras are successful in slowing vehicles down.
If speed cameras are genuinely effective in saving lives, if speed is genuinely responsible for a third of accidents as the government claims, we would expect to see a strong correlation between speeding convictions and deaths.
The following chart shows the actual correlation, from the Government's own statistics:
Speed Camera Fixed Penalties & Prosecutions
England & Wales
(Scale 1:10000) |
206,900
 |
262,200
|
336,700
|
403,800
|
498,600
|
699,400
|
1,014,600
|
1,235,500
|
1,797,400
|
1,913,700
|
?
|
?
|
Fatalities
(magnified by 1000)
(Scale 1:10) |
3,213
 |
3,240
|
3,222
|
3,036
|
3,113
|
3,084
|
3,096
|
3,127
|
3,177
|
2,915
|
2,915
|
?
|
| Year |
1995 |
1996 |
1997 |
1998 |
1999 |
2000 |
2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
Source: Home Office
(e.g.Motoring Offences and Breath Test Statistics England and Wales 2003 — Page 15 [pdf 600k]);
and Road Accidents Great Britain (DfT)
Data for 2005 & 2006 has still not been published.
The massive increase in speeding prosecutions has not led to a massive reduction in fatalities. It hasn't even led to a significant reduction in fatalities. In several years where the number of prosecutions has gone up, the number of fatalities has also gone up.
The figures prove beyond doubt that speed cameras do not save lives.
Speed cameras merely generate a huge number of fixed penalty notices and prosections that produced an income for the government of over £114,000,000 in 2004.
Speed cameras are nothing but
Click for larger version that you can use as wallpaper.
The ABD calls on the Government to abandon a policy which is nothing more than a stealth tax, and to replace speed cameras with genuine road safety initiatives:
- Spend money on roads to engineer-out accident blackspots
- Invest in driver training & education
- Restore traffic police to their pre-camera levels
In other words, a return to the 'Three Es' of Engineering, Education and Enforcement that were responsible for making our roads the safest in the world.
