Speeding offences soared by 400 per cent when a county council switched off its safety cameras, it emerged today.
Oxfordshire decommissioned its 72 fixed and 89 mobile units on August 1 when the county council withdrew funding from Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership.
But Thames Valley Police has now stepped in to fund the service after speeding soared by up to 400 per cent at some camera sites.
The service will be funded through fines and fees paid by motorists who are sent on speed awareness courses.
Today it was confirmed that the planned switch-on date is April 1 next year.
Under the new scheme, Oxfordshire County Council would only be responsible for maintaining the fixed camera sites.
Details of the rise in speeding offences emerged in a report to Windsor and Maidenhead Borough Council, which is also covered by Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership.
It stated: ”This model is currently being developed and will enable the police to recover all of their costs from offenders.
”Irrespective of the views on casualty reduction, there is a general consensus that speed cameras do have a deterrent effect on speeding and that their removal would lead to an increase in vehicle speeds.
”Early results from Oxfordshire show that increases in the number of speeding offences of up to 400 per cent have been recorded at de-commissioned camera sites.”
The county council had withdrawn #600,000 in funding to the Safer Roads Partnership – an organisation of the police and local roads authorities – because of Government cuts.
Oxfordshire switched off its cameras shortly after Swindon announced it was switching off its cameras from July 31.
However, initial statistics from the Swindon experiment showed a fall in accidents to 315 casualties over the first nine months, compared to 327 the year before.
But within days of the switch-off locals complained motorists were ignoring the redundant cameras and flouting the speed limits.
But has the accident rate increased? Surely that’s utterly fundamental to the whole issue of so called ‘safety cameras’?
How can the partnership (whose job it was to reduce casulties) say “Irrespective of the views on casualty reduction”?
Just goes to prove that they put revenue above lives.
400% sounds pretty low to me, given that on roads with no speed cameras your in the minority if your sticking ot the speed limit.
And as Dan says, 400% increase in speeding means nothing unless accident rates increase with that, and even then they are very dodgy stats to use unless used of a period of many years.
The whole empahsis is always on speed…. drive like a nutter and kill people – just do it within the speed limit is the message they are getting across – and successfully judging by the number of slow moving muppets on the roads these days!