Ends, Means, and Speed Cameras

At the secondary school that I attended, there was a very large rule book. So large, in fact, that after Her Majesty's Inspectors visited, they reported that discipline was too strict and that the boys should be allowed to relax more. According to legend, the Head put the report in the bin, and academic standards remained high until his retirement.

Anyway, one of those many rules was that although boys could use the classrooms during breaks, these were to be quiet areas in which boys were to remain seated. Effectively, we were not allowed to be standing in classrooms during breaks. This seemed most unfair to me while I was younger, but when I became a prefect I realised just how very useful this rule was. There would be many times when, as a prefect, you would walk into a classroom having heard the unmistakable sounds of commotion or bullying going on inside. Naturally, this would come to an abrupt halt when you walked in, but it was always obvious who was culpable. The problem would lie in determining exactly what they were culpable of, in a way that would stand up to subsequent discussion with the deputy head if the lines that you issued were called into question. What would not be denied, however, was that they were standing up. It is very difficut to punch someone if they are sitting a desk that is just out of arms length. Not impossible, I admit, but more effort than the average bully will make.

So, as a rule it was extremely useful and allowed us to do a lot of good. By the time I left that school, I had changed my mind completely and thought it was a good rule.

Since then, I have changed my mind again and have concluded that it was a very bad rule. Less scrupulous prefects could easily use as an instrument of oppression, because you could "do" almost anyone for it if you tried hard enough. It is, after all, somewhat of a challenge to enter or leave a room via a door, whilst remaining seated. It was a rule that had to be enforced with tact and discretion; done so, the results were very good. Without those key features, it engendered a feeling that authority was there to give the prefects something fun to do, something to allow them to express their inner Adolf - and that could be very corrosive and (in the end) counterproductive.

Which brings me to the subject of speed cameras. Speed limits are necessarily arbitrary; it is trite to point out that a speed which is safe on a dry clear day is wholly unsafe on a foggy icy night, but that the speed limit remains the same. Nevertheless, a good traffic officer can usually spot a bad driver, and those driving badly also often exceed a speed limit at some point. So an officer can ticket or arrest for speeding where he can see a bad driver, avoiding the need to prove dangerous driving.

Again, this is a rule which can do a lot of good when enforced with tact and discretion. The problem is that we forgot that aspect of speed limits when we introduced speed cameras. We forgot that speed cameras enforce the rule mechanically, catching all and sundry.

Now, I'm not condoning speeding, nor am I condoning a pick-and-mix approach to the law - abiding by the ones you like and ignoring the rest. Nor, however, am I going to be all holier than thou and suggest that I would not exceed any speed limit; no safe driver that I know abides by each and every limit at all times. The difference between them and a dangerous driver is which limits they exceed, when they exceed them, and by how much. The drivers that I see who will clearly never exceed a limit tend to be pootling along at 30 on NSL roads with no awareness of who or what is around them, no feeling for the dynamic qualities of their car, and no real degree of control over their car. To me, they seem very dangerous indeed (feel free to disagree with me, but that is my opinion).

Nor do I think that all speed cameras are bad. Where the necessary discretion can be exercised fully in the decision to place the camera at the location concerned, then there does not seem to be a problem. Put in other words, if the location is one where only idiots would exceed the limit, then the camera will only catch idiots. Some camera locations meet this requirement, and (in my opinon) are a positive contribution to safety. Most do not. Even for those that do, though, they are not a replacement for all enforcement as there will be icy, foggy nights when idiots will abide by the limit and need to be caught by other means.

The majority of cameras do, I think, make our roads less safe. Just as with the "no standing" rule, I have noticed a steady loss of respect for all motoring laws over the last decade. People no longer think that points on their licence mean they are a bad driver, merely that they were unlucky and were caught. A letter from a Safety Camera Partnership is seen as a tax demand, not a wake-up call to improve your driving. This loss of respect, which I think is the result of the mechanical enforcement of speed limits, leads to a standard of driving that is less careful and less safe. Our driving might be slower, but it is not safer.

I think that the reason behind this (admittedly counter-inutuitive) conclusion is that the purpose of the law is make roads safe, but the mechanism is to measure a driver's speed. There is a correlation between these, but not a perfect one. So when the law was enforced with discretion, other factors were brought in and improved that correlation. By enforcing speed limits in a mechanical manner, we manage to "institutionally forget" what the original purpose was and effectively enforce speed limits for their own sake - while claiming (falsely) that we are improving road safety.

Richard Hammond has an interesting take on the subject. Here he is, interviewed on Five Live, trying to move the issue away from speed limits per se and back onto simple road safety: