Orchestrated - Heart Strings & Speed Cameras
It is interesting to see the sudden emphasis on speed cameras in school zones in the US and Australia AT THE SAME TIME. Either politicians are copying each other or there is someone orchestrating this legislative push. Is it the company that sells speed cameras in Australia and the USA?
When you come up against stiff opposition to speed cameras, it seems obvious to pull out the trump card, the soft spot to parents, "safety of their children".
I know that speeding around schools is wrong and its usually teachers I've found that do it the most. Irradiating school kids with microwave radiation around schools isn't the best way to approach this problem. Its policing on the cheap and everyone knows it. Why do you think that this has never been an issue prior to speed cameras? Children very infrequently (thank goodness) do get run down but it has taken the speed cameras rise to popularity that has been the impetus.
Now that the USA is being targeted by speed camera salesman, schools are suddenly the trump card that is used to mould peoples minds to accept this type of automated microwave oven policing.
The microwaves that come out of speed cameras are NOT save at close distances. I have photos of speed cameras setup on foot paths "cooking kids" on their way to school. Police Officers have been silently dieing of cancers for years without someone taking much of an interest as to the cause. I know of one officer who had a nasty habit of placing the cone of the speed gun on his right thigh. "Not a great idea" I said to him on many an occasions. He died from bone cancer in his right leg that spread some 8 years later. Personally, I have intense pain in my head when I go near a microwave oven after several accidental "brain cooking" episodes with a speed gun left on in a patrol car with the windows wound up.
You can't tell me they are same around schools and school kids!
It's true – speed traps do NOTHING for road safety
So it's official, speed traps and cameras do absolutely nothing to reduce road carnage. It's something we have harped on about before but this time Oxford University in England is backing us up.
The British Department of Transport has claimed substantial reductions in slain, maim and pain figures but the university went to hospitals and collated data for itself that showed the accident rate in England has not in fact declined in any meaningful way over a number of years.
The death toll there is a bit over two thousand a year and holding; South Africa, with far fewer vehicles and drivers, is around TWELVE THOUSAND a year, around half of them pedestrians and a huge number taxi-related - like the recent crash in which 14 teachers died all at one go.
Bad driving kills people; unlicensed and untrained drivers kill people; pot holed and unmarked roads kill people; pedestrians on freeways kill themselves and others.
Governments should be vilified for allowing so many people to die through allowing the ridiculous focus on "speeding" continues to obscure what should be obvious bad driving kills, so train better drivers.
Urban Legend or Myth
Four youths from Canberra, Australia pulled off a trick of breathtaking bravado in order to gain revenge on a mobile speed camera van operating in the area.
Three of the group approached the van and distracted the operators attention by asking a series of questions about how the equipment worked and how many cars the operator could catch in a day. Meanwhile, the fourth musketeer sneaked to the front of the van and unscrewed its number plate.
After bidding the van operator goodbye, the friends returned home, fixed the number plate to their car and drove through the camera's radar at high speed - 17 times. As a result, the automated billing system issued 17 speeding tickets to itself.
Go Aussies!
The down side of nabbing the majority of drivers with a speeding fine is the inevitable rise in disqualified drivers and a steady rise in the road toll.
Concern has been raised by both supporters and opponents of
speed cameras that the exponential growth in speeding offences
detected will lead to a large increase in the number of people disqualified from driving, which may have severe economic consequences for those involved and may also encourage unlicensed (and therefore uninsured) driving.
If the governments of Australia keep this up, there will a huge cost to society. What is the point of slowing down road transport to a crawl with paranoid motorists, more intent on looking out for speed cameras than paying attention on what they are doing.
10th February 2006
Does it take a sharp "blow on the head" for politicians to realise that speed cameras are not the solution to the rising road toll? It will take something like that to stop politicians ranting the speed camera mantra.
New South Wales police and politicians are left scratching their heads with a road deaths blow-out, to end the year 2005.
The ACT doubled its road deaths last year despite speed cameras operating at 62 locations around Canberra, soon to be raised to 650 sites.
Western Australia has managed to scare drivers down to a crawl, slashing the number of speed camera tickets issued, yet the road toll for 2006 is a shocking start to the year.
Answer: More Speed Cameras - naturally
Its a fact that when I drive along Western Australian roads, I am looking at the curb for hidden speed cameras, more often than looking at what is coming down the road. Fear will do that to a person!
Recent news articles suggest that the Western Australian Minister for Police is dragging her feet, on legislation that would end the free run for speeding motorbikes that currently don't require a front number plate to be fixed to their motorbike.
The Western Australian police Multanova speed camera only takes photographs of the front of vehicles in Western Australia.
Not to be held up by the Minister for Polices slow response, the WA Police appear to be making up their own rules.
1. Hiding speed cameras in wheelie bin shaped boxes.
2. Using "Wheelie bin cameras" on down hill slopes.
3. Take photographs of speeding cars from the rear without approval?
Add to this ridiculous heavy "driver identification" fines that will force people to lie to avoid bankruptcy and a rising road toll and you start to get the picture that this is turning out to be a major mess.
