Setting up a speed camera on a Mitchell Freeway driveway on a Saturday morning is a dog act.
Imagine it’s you: you drive a few hundred meters on a straight stretch of road at 60 km/h before reaching a 100 km/h sign that gives you a short distance to merge with the much faster moving highway traffic.
It is a sunny autumn day; the visibility and little traffic are perfect.
Now visualize one of those speed cameras parked about 50 meters from the 100km/h sign, about the point where you and most drivers would think to accelerate to match the speed of the highway.
But imagine a brush; imagine the speed camera vehicle behind a bush.
It’s Saturday morning, you don’t care, and you just got pinged while driving 80kph in a 60kph zone that was 50m away from becoming a 100kph zone.
$400 and three penalty points. Yaks.
Camera IconBen O’Shea asks if it’s really about security. Credit: Ian Ferguson/WA News
As you’ve probably guessed, your loyal columnist found himself in this position on Saturday, and to say he’s not happy is an understatement.
But let’s make a few things clear right away: for starters, no infringement notices had landed in the letterbox at the time of publication, so what we’re talking about here is the principle.
The person who gave permission should be ashamed of themselves.
Secondly, the undersigned currently has zero penalty points on his driver’s license, from which it can be inferred that he is a sensible driver and certainly far from a leading foot.
However, the main point to be made here is that this is not a rant against speed cameras.
Of course, nobody likes those things, but like math teachers and politicians, they’re a necessary evil.
Camera icon Ben O’Shea. Credit: Jackson Flindell/The West Australian
WA has a road safety problem, with the state recording the highest number of fatalities in five years (166) last year.
That’s 166 families who have lost a loved one, and the pain affects thousands.
We’ve already lost 48 West Aussies on our roads this year, and speeding, fatigue, and inattention are major causal factors.
So anything that can curb a driver’s tendency to speed is objectively good.
Set them to catch people speeding in a school zone or honking on suburban streets.
Use them on well-known blackspot roads and do it regularly to reinforce the road safety message where it is most needed.
There are many ways multi novas can be used to catch speeding drivers in situations that could have dangerous consequences.
Driving on a one-lane highway in a driveway, 50 meters from a sign that increases the speed limit to 100 km/h, is not one of those situations.
Installing a speed camera is revenue-boosting in its blatant way, and the person who authorized it should be ashamed of themselves.
At a time when the cost of living is as high as it has been in years, it equates to daylight robberies.
