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[privacy] Cameras Catch Speeding Britons and Lots of Grief
From: Gordon Darling <gordondarling () dsl pipex com>
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 22:39:41 +0000
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/world/europe/27camera.html?_r=1&oref=slogin <snip> KELVEDON HATCH, England, Oct. 24 — To drive in Britain is to measure out your trip in speed cameras. As inevitable as road signs and as implacable as the meanest state trooper, they lurk everywhere, the government’s main weapon against impatient drivers. It is a shame that so many people hate them. Among the ways that motorists have made this clear: spraying the cameras with paint; knocking them over; covering them in festive wrapping paper and garbage bags; digging them up; shooting, hammering and firebombing them; festooning them with burning tires; and filling their casings with self-expanding insulation foam that, when activated, blows them apart. Visual examples can be seen on the Web site of a vigilante group called Motorists Against Detection, which displays color photographs of smashed, defaced and burned-out cameras — pornography for the anti-camera movement. In a nation that is estimated to have four million surveillance cameras — the most per capita in the world, civil liberties groups say — there are currently as many as 6,000 spots for speed cameras, in the country and in the city, on highways, urban arteries, suburban streets and rural lanes. “Speed cameras can’t detect tailgating, bad driving, drink driving or drug driving,” said a spokesman for the group, explaining his objections. An occasional contributor to British radio debates about traffic regulations, he uses the name Captain Gatso — after the most common form of speed camera — because, he says, he wants to avoid arrest. The government does not keep figures on camera vandalism, so it is impossible to confirm Captain Gatso’s claim that the group, known as M.A.D., has attacked more than 1,000 cameras, or that its members are “grown-up people, with normal jobs, who are cheesed off,” rather than hooligans engaging in “willy-nilly childish vandalism.” But if there is a battle between motorists and speed cameras, the cameras are surely winning. In this little hamlet in Brentwood, about an hour northeast of London, one particularly reviled camera — installed to catch people exceeding the 40 m.p.h. speed limit on a busy suburban road — has been set on fire three times in the past year, and three times it has been repaired. Now, about $66,000 later, it is back on the job again, new and improved, swathed in protective fireproof housing. “Touch wood, we haven’t had any incidents since,” said Rachel Whitelock, liaison for the Essex Safety Camera Partnership, which installs and maintains the county’s camera sites: 96 stationary spots; 160 stretches of road policed by cameras whose locations change; and 26 traffic light cameras for red lights. The government says the cameras have been a resounding success, reducing speed by an average of 2.2 miles per hour at speed-camera sites, reducing the numbers of people speeding at the sites by 31 percent and reducing by 42 percent the number of people killed or seriously injured at the sites. In public opinion surveys, they point out, a majority of Britons say they support having cameras on the roads. But theory is one thing; practice is another. People like to drive fast, and they bridle at being told what to do. About two million are caught by the speed cameras a year, generating more than $200 million in fines. “It’s incredibly difficult to get to people to come to terms with slowing down here,” said Francis Ashton, the road safety manager for the city of Nottingham. “In the States, you have much slower speed limits, and there’s more of a culture of sticking to the speed limit.” The cameras detect cars that exceed the speed limit, often with radar technology, and take flash photographs of the license plates so a ticket can be issued. A speeding offense adds three points to a driver’s license. Because drivers who amass 12 points in three years face six-month driving bans, people go to enormous lengths to avoid detection. In a recent case, 28-year-old Craig Moore, an engineer from South Yorkshire, ran into trouble when, in the words of a spokesman for the Greater Manchester Police, “instead of just accepting that he had been caught traveling above the speed limit, Moore decided to blow the camera apart.” <snip> more at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/world/europe/27camera.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1 -- gordondarling<at>dsl<dot>pipex<dot>com _______________________________________________ privacy mailing list privacy () whitestar linuxbox org http://www.whitestar.linuxbox.org/mailman/listinfo/privacy
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- [privacy] Cameras Catch Speeding Britons and Lots of Grief Gordon Darling (Oct 28)