Under the plan, statistics released might include accident rates at camera sites, recorded vehicle speeds and the number of offenders prosecuted or alternatively offered speed awareness courses.
Road Safety Minister, Mike Penning, said, “Public bodies should be accountable and if taxpayers' money is being spent on speed cameras then it is right that information about their effectiveness is available to the public.
“The proposals I have announced today will help show what impact cameras are having on accident and casualty rates and also how the police are dealing with offenders. This is in line with our commitment to improve transparency of government data so that the public are able to make more informed judgements about the work of local and central government.”
At least the government is now referring to them as ‘speed cameras’, instead of the disingenuous ‘safety cameras’.
While this spirit of glasnost is to be welcomed, such data on its own may be pretty much useless. The number of accidents (and injuries sustained) that occurred before a speed camera was installed would have to be known too, otherwise it’s impossible to judge whether the camera is effective or not. Even then, the actual causes of crashes at the site would also have to be disclosed to see how many were actually speed-related.
One important thing that the proposals seem to ignore is what then happens with the results? Will a camera be removed if it can be demonstrated that it plays no role in road safety? Will a particular speed limit be raised to a more appropriate level if it’s found that there are minimal speed-related accidents? If it’s just business as usual, and nothing is done, then publishing the data in the first place seems rather pointless.
The Department for Transport will be consulting with the Highways Agency, police forces and local authorities to decide exactly what will be revealed. It’s intended that data will be made available to the public from April 2011.
