Only problem I have with Speed cameras
...is that they put the emphasis on the wrong thing.

I completely agree with the fundamental purpose, i.e. that there's a limit, you break it and you may get caught. I'm not even going to make an argument for "appropriate for the conditions", e.g. doing 35mph at 4 AM on a tuesday morning.

What I mean is that the focus is taken from those factors which are more jedgement based, e.g. tailgating, driving w/o due care, recklessly eating a banana, drink driving. Where you have a physical policeman (not council employee in a van), who can make a judgement and determine what is poor or dangerous behavious, this avoids the yes/no nature of the camera. It's organisational nature to redirect resources to targets, and if the road policing targets are primarily speeding, then where these are achieved, resources will be suffled elsewhere (e.g. Brazilian electrician patrols)

There is one more thing that I dislike abou them though. the increasing digitisation and convergence of surveilance technologies mean that the country becomes a surveilence culture by stealth. We already know that the Congestian charge system is available in real time to MI5. SPECS and ANPR systems for tax discs checking provide a simple method of tracking individuals through existing government records.

For a long time I've asked how long it will take for SPECS systems to be mounted on all road networks, so that an individual vehicle can be tracked across the country point-to-point. With the announcements this week about the proposed £6bn managed motorway system - this is exactly what's proposed.

Once this is in place, what's to stop then next phase being automatic analysis of every journey? Analysing your average speed and automatically ticketing you if you go above the limit on any segment? Recalling you for additional driving behavioural retraining if you drive for more than 10 hours in one day? Generating a motoring environmental impact statement and charging you accordingly.

The worst of it is that I'm not necessaily saying that these would be bad things(!), but I for one don't want to have my every move scrutinised by whitehall...

...and to think people are getting miffed about Google Street View cameras.
( Fireflier La la la la, not listening on, Fri 18 Jul 2008, 13:57, Reply)