Speed and red light cameras have been recommended for the ACT. They come after a four-month $160,000 study was sponsored by the NRMA … ACT Road Safety Trust and involved scientists and specialist engineers from Sydney-based traffic engineering firm Jamieson, Foley and Associates Pty Ltd who attended most of the accidents sites in the ACT during much of last year’s winter. However, the ACT Minister for Emergency Services, Gary Humphries, is yet to be convinced, largely on cost grounds.
Sadly, much more of the improvement in the road toll over the past two decades can be put down to harsher policing measures than to education, better roads or safer cars. It seems we have to be brow beaten into better behaviour on the roads. Or more accurately, drivers have to be made to realise that there is an additional risk to speeding, reckless or drunken driving … the risk of a fine or licence loss. It is fairly evident that some people respond more readily to that risk than to the more serious risk of death or injury because the latter is treated with the attitude that “”it cannot happen to me.”
In view of the success of radar, random breath-testing and, in other jurisdictions, cameras, the ACT Government should be more receptive to the cameras for the ACT. They are costly, but can save lives, medical costs and probably can be made to pay for themselves, though that should not be an excuse for using them as revenue-raisers on open, safe roads to catch generally law-abiding people doing a few km/h over the limit.
Indeed, double-yellow-line cameras should be next. Drivers have to be educated that breaking traffic rules is not worth the risk.