Devon Greens condemn cuts which threaten Devon and Cornwall Safety Camera Partnership

Perhaps the county council should give the redundant cameras to the hopefully future reduntant councillors like Paula Black. What do the Green Party know about road safety, they would have us all back to horse and carts if they had their way.

They built a cosy little empire fleecing the public for minor infringements and tried to justify it all with all manner of bent statistics.The party is over, good riddance.

Whilst the original intent of cameras was good, the science and research wasn't.

The 'rules' demanded genuine engineering followed by identifiable failure over a rolling three year period resulting in a technological investment as a pure deterrent.

Those 'tempted' by the new toys were people who fancied the job of running
the show, for a 20k PC or 25k Sgt it was 'double your money' by taking
a sabbatical until the bubble burst.

The projected life of the 'game' was 2 years and some considered taking a sabbatical to earn cash before returning to the fold.

Council's however had different ideas, blame the driver, blame the police
rally the dumb public. By doing so they could stop spending on engineering and use the budget money to keep up single salary status (one authority suggested turning out all street lights at night to save 400k so senior executives could keep their pay status. The fact all 30s would fall and become unrestricted roads was of little, sorry, no concern).

The easy way to dodge the serious questions for those in power was to have a consultancy firm to design and run the programme.

The process needed formal certification, many councils employed less than qualified staff as 'highway safety engineers' to sign off less than engineered solutions. Many of the original sites still visit have no identifiable engineering solutions, there may be a lick of paint, the odd sign but nothing to resolve easily identifiable issues.

That way, plausible deniability reigned and the boxes ticked, cameras were authorised big staff increases were sanctioned, the golden goose came in and for those orchestrating the system money flowed.

Sadly, bad practice overtook good intent and genuine solutions. Road policing was hacked back, police staff previously used as high profile response and deterrent were released to 'other duties' meeting more diverse performance indicator targets:

More interestingly, few realised that in the world of camera enforcement success was not rewarded, it was seen as failure and that was not allowed.

Partnerships had to take all steps possible to ensure that drivers accepted the FPN conditional offer as only those resulted in cash returns.

In a system which was supposed to reduce speeding, a bid for say 20k tickets a year could simply not produce less ticket 'sales'.

Partnerships had to predict ticket sales for the forthcoming year. So, if they thought they would issue 20,000 tickets, a successful deterrence system should reduce offending.

However, say the partnership was successful and only 15,000 tickets were issued, people should be happy shouldn't they? The public would be pleases at the success of the system wouldn't they?

Wrong. the partners in the partnership had to make up the shortfall: 5000 tickets = a minimum of £300,000 out of a budget already spent on staff and equipment. Panic would reign.

Actually there was a simple and required solution (as mentioned in Hansard)
the partnership must recover the shortfall in the following year.

So, in other words, in year three, having reduced offending by a quarter, they actually had to increase detection by two thirds to recoup the original loss and then break even.

Where was the deterrence factor in that then?

I was advised that the 'industry' lobbied pressure groups and government
figures demanding to know how they could be ignoring a technology the public needed and one with such benefits to society.

The demon was released and many manufacturers entered boom years.

To some, furthering careers were causes far more important that road
safety, in fact, some retired police say they made double their former salaries
on top of their pensions from the process. I recall one 5 year old Ford actually did become a brand new Range Rover.

Serving officers were making a killing, initially enforcement could only be undertaken on days off and during periods of authorised overtime.

Only those with a good performance return needed to apply.

Low ticket counts meant no camera work, no camera work meant no overtime, no overtime, no new car.

Now how could anyone say there was an incentive for corruption there then?

When the spin doesn't work and the truth was being sought by a quizzical public, the first bubble burst, camera partnerships 'closed' and the systems were taken over by councils who then got the cash return as a grant rather than direct payment.

So now the bubble has burst again, no government grants means no cash.

All of a sudden preventing 3k deaths a year is of little interest to senior council officers who face redundancy, pension reductions and pay cuts.

Cameras actually cost a lot to run, it is said the figure comes to between 20 and 40 thousand pounds a year, 30 cameras are expensive,
how could this be unusual given the staffing levels and processing costs.

Police created 'departments', CPS extra office staff, Magistrates Court increased processing staff levels and of course, the council's created their own empires.

So, there you have it, 40 redundancies and now the police are trying to rally
support from those who don't know, to maintain jobs that prevent directly
engineered solutions to what were identifiable problems.

40 jobs at £20k = £800k.

Invest that over 3 years at identifiable collision sites and that is £2.4 million.

That kind of money can make a big difference in a small county.

Sadly it won't happen, its a sad world, sad life and death decisions
driven by sad people more concerned with self than being selfless.

Time will tell, change will come, hopefully sanity will reign and genuine
casualty reduction will occur instead of the great and good trying to
sell a 21st century version of the snake oil.

I for one will not be weeping at the demise of these systems, those employed
knew and know the truth, they know and knew the consequences of their inaction and the demonising of every driver.

It is they that sold their communities short and they should be looking over their shoulders counting the physical cost of their private empire building.

People have short memories and are hypocrits with regard to cameras. Weather you are for or against, these things are and always have been an infringement of human rights, an invasion of privacy and as proved by any good solicitor ileagal
They have only one genuine use and that is to make money. However it has now been realised that the costs of maintanance, commities saleries to administer them and the increasing number of lost court cases means they are no longer viable. If Devon county council want them removed I will happily provide this service free of charge thus saving the local tax payer thousands. Hopefully the safety camera partnership will also be desolved and even more pen pushers will have thier jobs cut resulting in even more money saved.
Excuse the spelling

It's so good to know that there is sense somewhere in politics