‘New fixed speed cameras will be switched at six accident blackspots by July as the [Queensland] Government tries to slow the soaring road death toll. The new devices – two each on the Gold and Sunshine Coasts and in Ipswich – will treble the number of fixed speed cameras in use.

Premier Anna Bligh said: “Too many lives are being lost on our roads because some motorists are choosing to put their lives and lives of others in peril by speeding”

“I am determined to take whatever action we can to reduce this carnage” ’

(Sunday Mail 17 May 2009)

Six new cameras will treble the number in use. That means that there are only three in use now!

What a mindboggling contradiction – speed cameras are purported to be an effective way of reducing accidents and fatalities…..but there are only three of them out there….in all of Queensland!

Six new cameras doesn’t amount to a hill of beans! Talk about tinkering around the edges of the road-safety issue.

Come on Premier Bligh. If these things are effective, and you really want to take whatever action is necessary, then why aren’t they everywhere? Why aren’t there hundreds, no thousands of them, across the state?

It is all about revenue raising and less police on the road to save on costs.We have them everywhere in NSW.They really get you in 40 km zones.The lunatics in Sydney what 10 km zones in the City.It is the idealistic morons who hate the car but ignore the functioning of the real economy.Labor Govts do what they are best at.Taxing,charging and regulating.Just kick them out next election.

I can recall when Wayne Goss was campaigning to eventually win the election that removed the National Party in Qld, he made a big point about radars not being "traps", but tools to reduce speed in dangerous locations. He made a pledge, which I seem to recall Beattie reiterated when he was elected, that henceforth radars would be placed in highly visible locations, not on downhill sections where speed may creep up a little; not behind blind corners, when the danger is that the corner may be taken too fast; not at the change of speed zones, where people may be carrying some excess speed from the previous zone, or accelerating a little prematurely. He also said they'd not be disguised, but made as visible as possible.

What do I encounter in my daily driving? On Kessels Rd, Mt Gravatt there is a fave spot on the downhill section leading to Newnham Rd; further along, another favourite, also down hill, but this time just around a blind corner and almost adjacent to the change in speed zone; on Broadwater Rd, Wishart, outside the Adventist college (never outside the State school just around the corner on Ham Rd, where traffic is heavy), usually AFTER the school at the bottom of the hill, generally setting up just as school commences, presumably to get the maximum number exceeding the 40km/h limit; on Toohey Rd, Salisbury, just before Evans Rd, behind a blind corner that has a crest just before it, meaning that people are often going a little fast having had their foot down to get up the hill; on Evans Rd, Salisbury, near Beaudesert Rd, at the end of a long downhill. I could go on and on.

I've lived and travelled in that area for years. None of those locations are "black spots" or especially dangerous for pedestrians or the driving public. I can't recall seeing or hearing of a significant traffic incident at any of them. They share a proximity to the local police station, however and a location designed to maximise the take.

Yes Arjay and Antiseptic, unfortunately revenue-raising seems to be a major motivation a lot of the time. The worst example of unscrupulous revenue-raising that I’ve witnessed was a mobile radar trap in a stationary vehicle on the side of the road on the Bruce Highway just south of the Yeppoon road intersection, north of Rockhampton.

Traffic enters the Bruce Highway from here with an open straight dual carriageway in front of them. In the absence of a speed limit sign, there is no reason to think that the speed limit would be less than 100kmh. But the limit is 80 (or 60?). Many drivers who had no intention of exceeding the speed limit would have been booked in that situation. And yet no speed signs get erected, year after year, and police presumably regularly plant themselves there and make a killing. That is foul. In fact it is despicable.

One thing that has to go hand in hand with increased speed regulation is vastly increased speed limit signage, so that drivers know what zone they are in all the time. The first thing that has to happen in this regard is that signs be placed, or painted on the road, just past every significant intersection, so that drivers know what the speed limit is when they enter a new road, instead of having to just bloody guess a great deal of the time, before they encounter a sign, often a long way down the road.

continued

But hey, the government could have considerably increased revenue and road-safety could be significantly improved at the same time, with the implementation of hundred more fixed cameras, couldn’t it?

And the number of police on our roads wouldn’t have to increase. The current pifflingly small number of mobile radars would still be an integral part of the system, and perhaps the road cops could actually see fit to shift their focus from speed to tailgating and other hazardous driver behaviour.

And part of the increase in revenue could be put into greatly improved speed limit signage.

And, a fair whack of new jobs could be created to administer the cameras and fines.

It seems as though greatly increasing fixed camera sites is eminently sensible, especially with Premier Bligh’s hard rhetoric on road safety.

So why then are their only six new cameras in the offing, and presumably no more after that for a long time to come?

Have you ever had to counsel a woman whose child was killed by a motorist doing over the speed limit outside a school or on a blind corner? Tragically I have a few times . Not my favourite type of call. The law is there to protect the innocent and as a consequence it is geared at catching the lowest denominator to raise the safety.

Consequently have no time for the 'traps' mentality argument.
Like the WW2 (rats of Tobruk) vet who complained in the paper about
Being pinged for speed...he claimed he should get lee way because of his status etc or a discounted fine. The overwhelming response was "If you don't want the ticket DON'T SPEED". If you get the fine don't whinge about it YOU broke the law (full stop). I too have been pinged but I take the wider view and never whinge about it because I broke the law.(I did the crime I did the time [time is money]).

Ludwig as for where are the hundreds of others?
a it costs a bucket to buy/install and maintain etc. like the weird tom says...."Show me the money?"
Politics is reputedly the art of the possible. Can you imaging the uproar from the public if tens of millions were suddenly allocated?
The curmudgeonary myopic enough.
And as for the fund raising well what do you think the money goes.
Can you imagine if they added a road tax to pay .
I'm surprised that you of all people hasn't thought this through