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Residents in a Nottinghamshire town have volunteered to take part in an anti-speeding project.

Working with Nottinghamshire Police, 11 volunteers in Kimberley will be using speed guns to register drivers' speeds in a bid to improve safety.

The volunteers have been given high visibility jackets and specialist training from the police.
Those caught speeding will receive a letter highlighting the offence and advising them to take greater care.

'Worth the effort'

The speed gun project, which starts on Saturday, will run on Swingate, Nottingham Road and Eastwood Road.

Nick Palmer, MP for Broxtowe, said: "I accept that speed cameras are not universally popular.

"However, these monitors are in spots chosen by local people as areas where speeding traffic endangers lives.

"Experience from other parts of the country is that it makes a real difference - and if that saves a life, it's worth all the effort."

Source: BBC News - 02/02/2008

A blunder has meant that speed cameras installed on a motorway cannot be used because one has been put in the wrong place, the Highways Agency admitted.

The Specs cameras measure the average speed of traffic on the M27 between Fareham and Portsmouth in Hampshire.

They are set to control a 50mph limit during nine months of road works.

But a week after the cameras were put up, the Highways Agency said they cannot be used eastbound because one camera had been put in the wrong place.

The agency said a camera to monitor traffic coming on to the motorway at junction 11 has been positioned too far back from the junction.

Yellow vultures

Roger Jones, Highways Agency spokesman, said: "The eastbound carriageway is being currently monitored by the police until we have the additional camera in place.

"We weren't picking up the traffic coming from junction 11 for Fareham and Gosport.

"Another camera has been ordered and we are expecting it to arrive fairly soon. Then it has to be tested before it is operational.

"We are asking drivers to mind the 50mph speed limit and keep to that speed limit."

He said the cameras on the westbound carriageway were in operation.

The Specs cameras, nicknamed "yellow vultures" because of their position overlooking the road and their colour, use automatic number plate recognition technology to track a vehicle between two points and work out its average speed.

Source: BBC News - 31/01/2008

A high number of motorists have no idea that the rules regarding the positioning and colour of speed cameras changed in April 2007.

Speed, or "safety" cameras, as the Government calls them, no longer have to be painted yellow, or be visible from 60m (200ft), and no longer have to be sited only where there is a history of road accidents. The regulations were relaxed in April after the Government had announced in December that camera partnerships would no longer be able to keep the money generated by speeding fines to pay for more cameras; instead, they'll get grants from a yearly, central road-safety fund of £110million.

As part of the new autonomy for the local partnerships, the Department for Transport handed over the regulation of the cameras, saying "the Department does not want to be prescriptive about the conditions to be met for the use of safety cameras." It now merely issues guidelines as to how the cameras should be operated. The guidelines still state that cameras should be painted yellow or covered with "retro-reflective" sheeting, and that they should be visible at up to 60m where the speed limit is 40mph or below, and 100m at all other speed limits. They also still recommend siting the cameras where at least three people were killed or seriously injured in the 36 months prior to the camera proposal being submitted, although the guidelines now state: "While the primary objective for camera deployment is to reduce KSIs [collisions where the person was killed or seriously injured] at known collision locations, cameras can also be beneficial where there is community concern - ie the local community requests enforcement at a particular site because traffic speed is causing concern for road safety, or where there are engineering factors that cannot be implemented in the short term and enforcement is being used as an interim measure."

But all the DfT stipulations are guidelines only, and some local partnerships have already said that they find the DfT regulations too restrictive. Meredydd Hughes, head of Roads Policing for the Association of Chief Police Officers (who appeared in court this week after being flashed by a speed camera doing 90mph in a 60mph zone), told a national newspaper in June that covert speed cameras would help cut road casualties, and when the proposal to deregulate speed cameras was first aired, Lee Murphy, speed camera manager for Cheshire, said: "If the rules weren't compulsory, we could use cameras to tackle emerging trends rather than waiting for the minimum number of collisions." Road safety charities, including Brake, also welcomed the possibility of more covert enforcement.

The DfT meanwhile says that if local partnerships are found to be abusing their autonomy, it will consider bringing back enforced regulation.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk - 03/11/2007

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