Many drivers ignore posted speed limits with impunity, and to combat this people need to believe enforcement is ‘any time, any place, anywhere’.
That’s the view of Emma Kelly from Road Safety Support, as expressed in a keynote presentation delivered as part of the 2020 Festival of Road Safety.
Emma Kelly’s presentation outlined a new enforcement strategy for speed cameras, called Raising the game’, published recently by Road Safety Support (RSS).
Emma said the new strategy was prompted by concerns at RSS about the UK’s stagnating KSI figures. It focuses specifically on speed cameras and the role they can play in helping to reduce road deaths and casualties.
Emma explained that enforcement, and the integration of speed management to reduce casualties, forms part of the ‘Safe System’ methodology.
She went on to outline how ‘unpredictable visibility’ can increase the deterrent effect among drivers.
“We know that wide area enforcement works,” she said, going on to reference a pilot scheme in Cumbria which resulted in a 30% reduction in KSI casualties over an 18-month period.
Talking of the importance of effective communications she said that ‘while we are winning the war in the law courts, we are not winning the war online, or on the roads’.
She said that while they may not like it, most drivers perceive enforcement as fair ‘if they know about it in advance’.
However, she added that the credibility of camera enforcement requires special attention. Enforcement programmes, she said, need to be set out clearly to ensure they receive public acceptance, which can also be helped by setting ‘credible’ speed limits.
The RSS report recommends that police forces and camera partnerships develop a ‘long-term, stepped or layered enforcement strategy’, including a flexible and random approach to mobile enforcement and the use of covert enforcement.
Emma Kelly’s full presentation can be viewed on the Festival of Road Safety website catch up service
