SWINDON TORIES: INDIFFERENT TO DEATH ON THE ROADS
I am on the radio tomorrow morning, BBC Swindon at 8:00 am, to discuss the result’s of tonight cabinet meeting which will review the town’s road safety strategy.
Swindon Borough Council is the darling of Jeremy Clarkson and the advocates of irresonsible road use after it voted last October to stop funding speed cameras.
Road traffic deaths are sadly a day to day part of urban life, and only when it comes close to home do we really notice. Back in March 2008, a seven year old boy, Tyrese Hannah, was killed by a car that mounted the pavement as he walked his dog alongside his mother. Tyrese attended the same primary school as my two sons and every day I pass the tragic roadside shrine where family, friends and neighbours have marked the site of their terrible, inconsolable loss.
Every month in the UK there are three children killed on the roads, many more are seriously injured. In 2002 there were 59 fatal car accidents or accidents involving very serious injury for every 100000 people. The figure in London is higher, where there are on average over 5000 deaths or serious debilitating injuries on the roads every year.
In 2005 when I stood for election I looked into this. In just one small area of Swindon, Pinehurst, there were 14 children knocked down by cars over twelve months. About 90 people on average are killed or seriously injured every year in traffic accidents in the Swindon area, and a further 500 are less severely injured in car accidents– mostly these are caused by reckless driving and speeding. In contrast there were just 172 robberies - yet there is a greater fear of robbery than of being involved in a serious car accident.
There is obvious, understandable and necessary concern about paedophiles and child abusers. But the equally grave danger to our children from traffic is treated as if it is a force of nature that we can do nothing about.
The vote by Swindon Borough Council to remove all speed cameras was ostensibly because the conservatives think it unfair that they to pay for the maintenance of the speed cameras but don’t see any of the £1.76m raised in fines from 30,000 drivers caught speeding in the town.
This is a rather dry technical dispute between Swindon Borough Council and the government about funding, because up until April 2007 Local Authorities did receive the fines income, and this paid for the cameras. Now the fines go to a national consolidated fund, and the councils receive back a grant from the Department of Transport for road safety, which is already in addition to the funding provided by the Local Transport Plan Process.
All of which is a long winded way of saying that on financial grounds, the council are making a big fuss about nothing. The mechanism of funding has changed, but they are not really out of pocket. Ironically, the reason the fines started to go to central government was due to lobbying by motorists organisations, who said (not without reason) that no single authority should both make the decisions on where the cameras are sited, and also receive the income - as this creates a conflict of interest.
The Tories’ stance is one of extreme libertarianism, that the responsibility for road safety should lie only with the individual motorist, and as Tory councillor Peter Greenhalgh, head of highways, transport and strategic planning for Swindon, has said: “There are much more important things we as a council should do instead of acting as a law enforcement arm of this Government.”
Yet strangely the same council has enforced a clamp down on fly-posting and grafitti, which are also law enforcement issues; yet to my knowledge no-one has even been killed by fly-posting or grafitti; and presumably they also still believe that the Police authority should be funded, and the question of bank robbery should not be left to the individual conscience of the robbers.
The stance of the Tory group is to effectively condone and minimise the criminal nature of speeding, which is a form of law-breaking, and to elevate the private rights of the irresponsible speeding motorist as being more important than the collective public safety. Of course there may be more effective technical measures than speed cameras for reducing our speed culture, but the most important factor is the moral pressure of public opinion that speeding is dangerous, selfish and wrong. Swindon Borough Council have deliberately weakened that moral pressure against speeding.
‘Speeding’ and criminals drivers are the biggest single source of violent death and severe injury in the UK - and yet it’s these criminals whom the authorities are doing their best to make sure they can’t be caught!
I suppose if we call them all ‘accidents’ then everything will be fine.
Kill or maim someone with a knife or a gun and you get treated like a criminal - do the same thing using a car as your weapon and the authorities aren’t interested.
Speed police deny hiding tactics
BBC Scotland
15 Apr 2009
In this BBC article the police are being asked to justify why they want to make a community safe for people to walk about in, safe from psychotic drivers who know that speeding causes the death and injury of innocent people!
Comment by joe90 kane — 15 April, 2009 @ 5:11 pm
Go get those libertarian Tories
why dont they legalise hard drugs
the truth is they were playing to the white van Clarkson fans
they announced the decission before any vote on the council
as Thatcher said if you havent got a car your a nobody
Still the nasty party and the Left would do well to rember that
Comment by Simon — 15 April, 2009 @ 11:39 pm
Speed cameras are often placed in “trap” locations, probably put there when the council recieved revenue from them. Such cameras could only be considered a tax on the motorist. No one complains that cars are manufactured to drive well above the national speed limit yet people here damn speeding. Why not invest in a technology to limit the speed of cars to the appropriate speed limit instead of peanalising everyone caught speeding? People only slow on approach to the cameras, then accelerate to a milion miles an hour once they go past, so calling them saftey devices is wrong.
Comment by Anonymous — 26 April, 2009 @ 10:33 am
How does being anti-surveylance sit with being pro-speed camera?
“About 90 people on average are killed or seriously injured every year in traffic accidents in the Swindon area, and a further 500 are less severely injured in car accidents– mostly these are caused by reckless driving and speeding”
MOST are CAUSED by reckless driving or speeding, really? Even if this were true do you really think additional speed cameras would have any impact? We need to get away from this automated policing idea where only crimes that can easily be solved by camera are followed up. More police on the streets and less cameras everywhere, including on the roads, would hopefully redress the balance and allow the focus to be proportionate to the seriousness of the crime.
Comment by Anonymous — 30 April, 2009 @ 11:12 am
“In 2005 when I stood for election I looked into this. In just one small area of Swindon, Pinehurst, there were 14 children knocked down by cars over twelve months. About 90 people on average are killed or seriously injured every year in traffic accidents in the Swindon area, and a further 500 are less severely injured in car accidents– mostly these are caused by reckless driving and speeding. ”
Oh dear you are soooo wrong about all this. The pinehurst accident record was caused mainly by people who lived in the area and the council spent over £500,000 modifying the road to stop this happening again - there have been hardly any accidents since they did this !
Looking at the last statistics there were 70 people killed or seriously injured - although I believe only 7 of those were killed.
Speeding isn’t the main cause of accidents although I wouldn’t expect someone like you to look at the facts
The department for transport report showed that only 6% of all accidents nationally were caused by people breaking the speed limit. Councillor Peter Greenhalgh was quoted saying this on the BBC and the stats are on the dft website to prove this.
You are of course exhibiting just a little bit of bias using the photo from the accident site of the little boy on Drove road - I believe that case hasn’t been to court yet and there is no proof at present to show the driver was speeding. Even if he was - would a camera have stopped him ? Probably not - same as that kid who got killed on Christmas day - he was hit by an uninsured driver - would a camera have stopped him ? again the answer is no.
just a further point about the sanctimonious bollocks you have written here - “This is a rather dry technical dispute between Swindon Borough Council and the government about funding, because up until April 2007 Local Authorities did receive the fines income, and this paid for the cameras.”
again Mr newman - check your sodding facts - the council has never received money from operating speed cameras - they used to be paid for by the governmnet and the revenue went back to those operating the cameras. In 2007 the government decided to make councils responsible for paying for the cameras and collected the revenue for the treasury.
If you are going to campaign against something get your facts right first - it is people like you spreading utter rubbish about important matters like this that f*ck it up for the rest of us.
Comment by George Thompson — 6 May, 2009 @ 10:30 am