Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Chris Huhne and the £500,000 speed camera

issue 16 February 2013

I don’t want to defend Chris Huhne, I really don’t. Apart from anything else, I have always thought the country would be better off if all Oxford PPE graduates were simply imprisoned immediately, instead of the present inefficient system where we wait for them to commit a crime first. This would save us from being ruled by people who wanted to be politicians at the age of 17.

But no newspaper has yet pointed out that the speed camera which caught Chris Huhne was not just any old speed camera. From what I have found online it seems to have been the long-notorious ‘Site 050’ camera at the M11 at Chigwell, just beyond the point where the speed limit on the motorway drops from 70mph to 50.

The camera was installed in 2000. In 2003, the year of Huhne’s offence, it generated more revenue than any other speed camera in the country.

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