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October 31, 2006

IN U.K., A BROUHAHA OVER SPEED CAMERAS

“In a recent case, 28-year-old Craig Moore, an engineer from South Yorkshire, ran into trouble when, in the words of a spokesman for the Greater Manchester Police, ‘instead of just accepting that he had been caught traveling above the speed limit, Moore decided to blow the camera apart. Using thermite, a pyrotechnic substance often used in underwater welding, Mr. Moore succeeded in wrecking the camera, but its hard drive survived — along with videotape of his van driving toward it and then driving away, as the picture dissolved in a cloud of fiery sparks. He was sentenced to four months in jail.’”

A New York Times feature article describes this and other examples of the limits to which some British motorists will go in opposing the country’s generally successful program using speed cameras to identify and ticket speeders. “To drive in Britain is to measure out your trip in speed cameras. As inevitable as road signs and as implacable as the meanest state trooper, they lurk everywhere, the government’s main weapon against impatient drivers. It is a shame that so many people hate them,” the Times article says.

“In a nation that is estimated to have four million surveillance cameras — the most per capita in the world, civil liberties groups say — there are currently as many as 6,000 spots for speed cameras, in the country and in the city, on highways, urban arteries, suburban streets and rural lanes… Even if they agree that speed limits are necessary, many motorists resent having to obey them all the time. They say they hate being constantly on the lookout for cameras and accuse the government of treating them like cash machines,” according to the Times.

But in the end, the effort to defeat the cameras is not worth it, a spokesman for the Institute of Advanced Motorists told the Times. “A lot of drivers feel alienated by speed cameras,” he said. “But the best way to deal with a speed camera is simply to comply with the law, and not to set fire to it.”

Posted by MVHAP at October 31, 2006 04:58 AM