British sociologist Alan Buckingham is in Australia at the behest of the Centre of Independent Studies arguing against speed cameras.
He says that road accidents have not fallen since they were introduced in Britain or Australia and that safety is best promoted by people driving to the conditions. Slow people obeying the limit might actually cause accidents, he argues. He says that the “revenue-raising” of pinging a lot of otherwise law-abiding people for going a bit over the limit alienates them. It would be better to concentrate of technology of car and road safety, he says.
Some of this is half true.
Some of it is inspired by political ideology. Speed cameras are an affront to rugged individualists who do not like state interference and state revenue-raising. Small wonder the Centre for Independent Studies gave an early media crack at the story to talkshow host Alan Jones – that hitherto great campaigner for mandatory sentencing, unless, of course, the offence is speeding.
The road toll has been fairly static in the past few years, even climbing slightly. The dramatic cuts were made from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. The toll in Australia fell from around 3000 to around 1800, despite high population, more cars and more kilometres travelled. The end of the dramatic falls in the toll has been coincidental with speed cameras. But it is a logical fallacy to argue that because sometime comes after something else that there is a causal (SUBS: CAUSAL, not CASUAL) link.
There is a more obvious general proposition about the road toll. Smarter technology to enforce road rules (speed and red-light, cameras, radar, Breathalyzers); better cars (seat-belts, anti-locking brakes, crumple fronts, air bags and the like); better roads; education; and more rigid enforcement (demerit points, on-the-spot fines) have combined to reduce the toll. Speed cameras are a part of this armoury.
The “revenue-raising” argument is twaddle. It is most loudly espoused by the speedsters from whom the revenue has been raised. Government coffers would be far, far better off if everyone obeyed the speed limits all the time and not one cent was raised from speed cameras. Hospital emergency wards would have less to do.
Buckingham is right when he says accidents are caused by people driving too quickly for conditions. In an ideal world populated by sensible drivers, people would drive to the conditions all the time. But they do not. They have to be prevented by the crude instrument of speed limits.
They are crude because a limit of necessity applies to a stretch of road at all times – whether day or night, wet or dry. Given that idiots push themselves to the limit (and often over) irrespective that it might be a wet night, the limits have to be set lower than what might be safe in dry daylight. Further, it would be too expensive and confusing to mark out suitable limits always conforming with conditions – 100 for a few kilometres and then down to 80 for a few turns and so on. So we have some blanket limits along some very long stretches of road where there might well be some places where it would be safe to go over the limit in dry daylight.
But the balance of convenience – now running at some 1000 saved lives and a $1 billion saved costs a year for a couple of decades – suggests that imposing and enforcing speed limits in an efficient but admittedly imperfect way is a fairly smart thing for a society to do.
We can keep working at the imperfections in enforcement. We can also keep working for a zero road toll.
Buckingham makes a sound point about alienating otherwise law-abiding members of society. You occasionally come across people who have been pinged a demerit point and $100 for being a few kilometres over the limit – their only offence in a lifetime of driving. All it does is drive them into the “cameras-are-revenue-raisers” corner. A polite letter or an “invitation” to a pay at the door road safety lecture would be far more effective.
We had an example of the ridiculous rigidity of the road rules this week. Chief Justice Terence Higgins should never have been charged with (italic) exceeding (italic) the prescribed concentration of alcohol while driving. He blew 0.05 – the exact limit — and an hour later 0.043. It is to his credit that he did not argue the point which would have entailed an embarrassing trial.
This sort of rigidity does not help the road-safety message as people view the police and the system as revenue-raising enforcers rather than a vehicle for road safety.
In a way, the speedster is perhaps more culpable than the person right on the drink-driving limit. The former at least has a gauge to inform him (or her) of the offence. There is no way that Chief Justice Higgins would have stepped into his car if it had a gauge telling him he was on the limit.
Then again, perhaps people in public office should impose a no-alcohol driving limit on themselves just to be sure.
The biggest drawback of a system of polite letters or lectures is that it vests discretion in the hands of police or prosecutors. And where you have discretion you have possibility of corruption, bias, discrimination and favouritism.
Incidentally, one wonders whether, even if they had such a discretion, the police would have exercised it in favour of Chief Justice Higgins favour given the tension between the police and judiciary over sentencing.
Maybe we have to put up with the rigidity. The isolated cases of rigidity causing unfairness and cases safe drivers being caught in an enforcement net whose mesh is too fine is the unfortunate price we have to pay to restrain the idiots on the other end of the driving scale – and they have to be restrained. In the 1970s they were killing 3000 people a year and even now nearly all of the 1800 to 1900 dead each year now can be put down to them.
We can start relaxing when the toll gets near zero. Yes it is possible. Thousands of people in Australia go through their driving lives without losing any demerit points and without being involved in any collisions. We just have to increase that number to millions — using technology, enforcement and education. Cameras and demerit points combine these admirably. The possibility of execution in the morning tends to concentrate the mind.