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Speeding Infringement Collectors What Happens to Revenue from Speeding Fines? Return to Home Page Articles on Speed Camera Manufacturers:
Poltech's revenue hits brakes company, which supplies the Victorian, NSW and
Tasmanian on the US legal
claim. The Australian Financial Review he was investigating the coincidence and had no idea what might explain it. claim
which is still to be finalised. of the
$10million it earned in 2001-02. the
Hume Highway and a speed camera systems upgrade in Tasmania.
Articles on Speed Infringements
SPEED BILLS Speeding
fines are guaranteed to raise any motorist's temperature, but when they come
from a hidden camera,
writes Paul Syvret, the blood really starts to boil. One of Australia's latest road safety campaigns bombards motorists with the message that "every K over is a killer". A more apposite slogan might point out that every K over is a nice little earner, at least for state and territory governments which last year raked in close to half a billion dollars in fine revenue.
It's all about safety, we're told. Speed kills, we're told. Ipso facto, slowing people down saves lives. As Queensland's Transport Minister, Steve Bredhauer, put it recently: "We want to make speeding as socially unacceptable as drink driving."
There is a growing community backlash because some governments have become as addicted to speed camera revenue as they have to taxes such as those on payrolls and gambling. And, as overseas, it is fast becoming a major political issue as motorists see the harsh enforcement as revenue- rather than safety-driven.
No one likes hoons who roar past schools at 90kmh, but nor does anyone like being pinged – expensively – by a speed camera for driving 4kmh over the limit at the bottom of a steep hill on a safe road.
Nor do recent figures tend to indicate that the clampdown on speeding is having any significant impact on fatalities.
In Victoria, according to the latest state budget, the government expects to reap $337m in revenue from "police fines" this financial year. According to the 2002 budget papers, this "largely reflects the introduction of road-safety initiatives to reduce Victoria's road toll". Read covert, electronic enforcement cameras.
But while revenue from speed cameras is climbing faster than revenue from traditional cash cows such as land tax, the road toll isn't dropping.
In NSW, according to an NRMA spokesman, the road toll is trending back towards the "horror" figure of some 600 deaths recorded in 2000. The NRMA says its members broadly support speed cameras but with two clear provisos: they are clearly signposted and there is a history of speed-related accidents on that stretch of road.
While the NRMA is broadly satisfied that these criteria are being met, the number of cameras in fixed locations within the state is expected to rise from 56 to 100 by the end of the year. Current speed camera revenues exceed $200m a year and are rising.
MOTOR magazine editor Michael Taylor: "We, seriously, get people writing to us every day pleading with us to lead a rally on parliament about this issue."
Taylor argues that traditional motorists' organisations such as the NRMA and the RACQ no longer truly represent their members because of their links to major insurance companies – which, for obvious reasons, do not want to be seen to be condoning "speeding". "We seem to be the only avenue left," he says. "When you boil it down to tin tacks, no one, and I mean no one, in any police department can come up with any conclusive data on how speed directly relates to crashes."
Opponents of the zero tolerance/covert camera regimes argue the logic is skewed. To argue that "speed kills", they say, is like saying x% of males involved in accidents have beards, therefore we should target hirsute motorists.
The Royal Automobile Club of Victoria's Ken Ogden says: "We are concerned that if enforcement becomes seen as a revenue measure then it loses its impact in terms of road safety." The RACV says that such is the aggressive nature of speed enforcement in Victoria that motorists are avoiding thoroughfares such as the Geelong Road – described by the club as "very safe" – for fear they will be fined for a minor lapse of judgment.
In Victoria, tolerance levels are set at 3kmh. Three. And few people travelling in a modern vehicle on a major highway zoned at 100kmh or 110kmh would be able to gauge such a potential infringement without spending more time watching their dashboard than the road itself.
Ogden adds: "We question the validity of enforcing very small tolerances. The community support for speed control will be undermined unless the campaign is directed at aberrant behaviour."
Remember that Australian Design rules allow for a 10% variance in car speedometers. Plus the fact that even sophisticated digital speedos are calibrated according to tyre size and their readings can be distorted with wear. Remember, too, most speed limits were set when we were still driving FJ Holdens with drum brakes, not modern cars with anti-lock brakes, four-wheel discs, airbags and power steering.
In the United States, the backlash has seen cameras trashed by irate motorists. In Britain, the government has ordered police to use cameras only at designated "black spots" – and only when clearly signed.
Politicians – non-treasury ones – are well aware of this. Take Victorian opposition leader Dennis Napthine: "In 1999, [Premier] Steve Bracks promised a 20% reduction in the road toll, and what have we got? Each year the road toll goes up and at the same time so, too, does revenue from traffic fines.
"The mood of the electorate is very, very angry. People who are being booked for going a few kilometres over the limit at the bottom of a hill, or on a freeway, view this as revenue raising. It has got to the point where the latest conspiracy theory has it that the projected increase in camera revenue just about matches the police service's recent pay rise. If you target motorists' wallets rather than their behaviour, you end up with an 'us and them' mentality, which is counterproductive."
Queensland opposition leader Mike Horan, an unreconstructed "law and order" National Party stalwart from Toowoomba, sings a similar song. "Everything points to this [Queensland] government as building up speed cameras – at the expense of having police on the beat – as a revenue raiser ... it is a bit like a fisherman going to his favourite spot."
Horan points to the tens of thousands of hours a year that Queensland coppers spend monitoring and administering cameras as being time that could be better spent at the pointy end – albeit less lucrative in treasury terms – of policing.
Even Queensland's chief traffic cop, traffic operations chief Grant Pitman, is on the record as questioning the use of resources currently devoted to speed camera enforcement. And this from a state that takes "only" some $30m a year from its 24 speed cameras – more than $1m a device a year.
The battle lines are being drawn. Again in Queensland in recent weeks, Bredhauer fired a broadside at Brisbane commercial radio stations that regularly update drivers not only on traffic conditions but speed camera locations. Most, as they put it in the argot of the north, have given the minister "two [fingers] to the Valley".
Or just key "police", "speed cameras" and "Australia" into your internet search engine, and it will serve up a smorgasbord of sites promoting what can really only be described as civil disobedience: camera locations; discussions on radar detection devices; strategies for challenging an infringement notice ...
One of the key areas of debate is deterrence versus enforcement. Professor Max Cameron, a researcher with Monash University's Accident Research Centre, argues that a covert camera system works best, adding that "some Australian states seem almost apologetic to motorists".
Cameron, who concedes he has been caught by speed cameras three times, says that since the introduction of the cameras, the number of crashes involving injury in urban areas has dropped by 30%.
Queensland takes a similar "anywhere, anytime" approach to Victoria. A spokeswoman for Bredhauer, while stressing that "there is only ever a road-safety agenda", says that cameras are placed around the 2400 designated sites in the state "for the maximum element of surprise".
Jurisdictions such as the ACT, however, take a different approach. There, speed cameras have been in use only since October 1999, with cameras clearly marked on designated sections of the road network identified as high-risk areas.
According to Robin Anderson, the road safety manager for ACT Urban Services, since the introduction of cameras, injury crashes within the network have dropped by 36%. The strategy in the ACT, he says has been aimed more at deterrence than detection: "We would rather have people not commit the offence in the first place, than get a ticket in the mail and then say, 'I better not do that again'."
What Happens to Speeding Fines Revenue?
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