ACPO MUST BE STOPPED SAYS SAFE SPEED
10 February 2005 - Safe Speed

According to The Times newspaper on Wednesday, The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) wish to have the rules for speed camera placement relaxed.

Safe Speed says ACPO are fumbling around in the dark and must be stopped. The proposed changes amount to nothing less than an admission of failure.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: ''It is unbelievable. They have had ten years to get road deaths down with their infernal speed cameras. It hasn''t worked; over 2 million fines per year; traffic speed are largely unchanged and road deaths are rising. Now they want to fiddle around with the placement rules and install more speed cameras. It''s blind faith and bad science. Speed cameras don''t make the roads safer
- quite the opposite - and the last thing we need is more.''

''The problem with the ACPO position,'' explains Paul, ''is that they are not working with trustworthy data. If we can''t trust them to use proper data we can''t trust them with roads policing decisions.''

''Road deaths would be down around the 2,000 mark now if pre-camera trends had been allowed to continue. The only explanation I can find for the loss of trend - and believe me I''ve looked - is bad road safety policy.''

''The speed camera programme has been a very sorry story of false assumptions, poor data, terrible management and seriously damaged public confidence. The loss of confidence in the Police and in official road safety messages is critical. The only way to restore confidence is to scrap the cameras and, while we''re at it, let''s scrap those responsible as well.

www.safespeed.org.uk

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