According to news reports, Department for Transport has approved 233 new speed camera sites.
Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "Speed cameras are bad news for road safety because they focus efforts on the wrong safety targets. Department for Transport clearly have not been reading their own research properly because the report published shows that claims of benefits at speed camera sites have been vastly overrated."
"We will not get road safety back on track while a single speed camera remains on our roads."
About Safe Speed================
The Safe Speed road safety campaign is primarily the work of engineer-turned road safety analyst Paul Smith.
Since setting up Safe Speed in 2001, Paul Smith, 50, an advanced motorist and road safety enthusiast, and a professional engineer of 25 years UK experience, has carried out over 10,000 hours working on the campaign with well over 5,000 of those hours researching the overall effects of speed camera policy on UK road safety. In addition to those 10,000 hours, Paul has funded to campaign to the tune of £10,000.
We believe that this is more work in more detail than anything carried out by any other organisation. Paul's surprising conclusion is that overall speed cameras make our roads more dangerous. Paul has identified and reported a number of major flaws and false assumptions in the claims made for speed cameras, and the whole "speed kills" system of road safety.
The inescapable conclusion is that we should urgently return to the excellent road safety policies that gave us in the UK the safest roads in the World in the first place. Far from saving lives, speed cameras are a dangerous distraction.
Safe Speed does not campaign against speed limits or appropriate enforcement of motoring laws, but argues vigorously that automated speed enforcement is neither safe nor appropriate.
Safe Speed is very slimly funded by voluntary contributions to the web site.We are urgently seeking improved funding.
The Safe Speed web site contains more than 350,000 words of road safety analysis and information. We are seeking publishers for 'the book of the web site'.
It has turned out to be quite an amazing story and there are opportunities for journalists and broadcasters to explore how all this came about, what it means, and where road safety has gone so badly wrong.
