‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’ John Maynard Keynes retorted to a critic. A pity he’s not here to ask the same question of the Department for Transport (DfT) when they lecture us on road deaths this Christmas.
Four years ago The Spectator (22 November 2003) helped to initiate the wider debate about speed cameras, hitherto primarily a concern of the specialist motoring press and the RAC Foundation. The article attracted considerable attention, partly because of the figures it quoted for cameras, drivers caught, revenue raised and the fact that, of 419 Somerset police officers caught in one year, only one was prosecuted. Somewhat reluctantly, however, The Spectator accepted the government’s justification for the strategy: research showed that cameras reduced deaths and injuries by 35 per cent.
There was really no arguing with that. Granted, the gradual criminalisation of the majority of the population for something that none can help doing at some point unless we drive with eyes only on the speedo is bound to lessen respect for law. Granted, too, that the camera is blind to circumstance, road conditions and reasonable behaviour. And granted that training courses might contribute more to road safety than endorsements, as some enlightened police forces realised; or that flashing warnings as you enter restricted zones might do more to reduce speed. Grant all that and more, but objections withered in the face of that 35 per cent reduction. Furthermore, ministers frequently quoted a DfT strategy paper to the effect that speed was ‘a major contributory factor in about a third of all road accidents’, that ‘excessive and inappropriate speed’ killed about 1,200 people a year and that this was ‘far more than any other single contributor to casualties on our roads’.
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