Is it time to install the cameras?

Yes... says Councillor David Wilde, who today will be handing City of York Council a petition signed by 700 people from Badger Hill and Osbaldwick calling for cameras

I AM a firm believer that the views of residents should always be taken into account in a democratic system.

It sometimes seems to members of the public that local authorities, planners and organisations such as the police and so on often discuss developments and traffic plans among themselves, and that what members of the public actually want to happen is only considered as an afterthought.

In the case of Hull Road, residents have made it very clear what they want to happen.

They want speed cameras and they believe these cameras could reduce the appalling number of accidents that happen on this very busy stretch of road.

The trigger for this petition was the tragic death of a student earlier this year.

She was knocked down by a car on a pelican crossing as she tried to cross the road on a Sunday evening after a meal at a pub.

That was a senseless waste of a young life, but it is only the most recent tragedy.

Official statistics show that there have been 15 accidents on the road in the last three years, one of them fatal.

But I have a very long memory, and I know in the past there have been some terrible accidents along this stretch of Hull Road.

The problem is that people have to cross that road to reach the shops, or get to bus stops, and cars are bowling along there at tremendous speeds - I have heard 60mph or 70mph quoted.

When people are coming in along the Hull Road off the ring road there are a number of places where they get held up, at traffic lights and roundabouts.

When they get past the last roundabout they have this 'free' road ahead of them, and that's where they put their foot down.

I'm a cyclist and, if I'm riding into Badger Hill from the city, it always seems dangerous when I want to cross the road. It is very difficult to judge the speed of the traffic because it is coming so fast.

You assume it will be going 30 or 40mph, but if it is going 60 or 70, you are only half way across and suddenly the car is on top of you.

I don't know exactly what the official policy of North Yorkshire Police is on speed cameras.

They do seem to be using them less than other forces, and I have been told by the police traffic officer for York that it will cost a lot of money to install them on the Hull Road.

But local people are angry, and they are frightened about crossing that road: especially parents whose children have to cross to go to school.

I believe, and they believe, that speed cameras could make a real difference: they would bring home to motorists the need to drive with care.

It is, after all, reckless drivers going too fast who are putting innocent people's lives at risk.

At the very least, if the authorities don't want to install speed cameras there, they should tell us why and they should be actively looking at some other way of reducing motorists' speed.

Residents' concerns must be taken seriously.

No... says Chris Charlton, road policing inspector with North Yorkshire Police

It may well be the case that in the right circumstances, fixed-speed cameras can be an effective way of reducing road accidents.

However, we cannot just put these in places wherever people might want us to do.

We are constrained by strict Government criteria.

The police forces that do use such cameras are in what are known as safety-camera partnerships with other partners, such as local authorities and highway authorities.

We are not in such a partnership, and the reason is that in 2002, when we carried out an assessment of our roads, there were very, very few sites either in North Yorkshire or within the City of York that would have met the Government criteria for setting up a speed-camera partnership. These criteria set out that there have to be a certain number of collisions occurring within a certain length of road.

There also has to be an excess- speed profile for that section of road.

Within North Yorkshire and the City of York there were no such high-risk sites that met the criteria for a fixed-speed camera. There were only a few that met the criteria for mobile enforcement.

None of which means that we do not take reducing accidents on our roads very seriously.

Any road accident that causes a death or serious injury is a tragedy. A single such incident is one too many.

We at North Yorkshire Police are in the business of reducing such accidents.

But there are other ways of reducing the speed of motorists and hence reducing the number and severity of accidents other than speed cameras.

We use hand-held laser-speed enforcement devices, often in conjunction with portable cameras.

We still do a number of traditional 'follow checks', where a police car follows a motorist through a speed limit.

And the single most valuable deterrent remains the high-profile presence of a marked police car on the street.

The statistics do seem to indicate that during the last 18 months we have had some success.

British road casualty figures for 2004 revealed some areas of the country in which fixed speed cameras were operating saw significant increases in casualty rates and death rates.

Here in North Yorkshire we saw a significant reduction in casualty and death rates.

We are clearly doing something right.

In respect to Hull Road in York: it would be wrong to change our policy based on that one short section of road.

We are in regular dialogue with City of York Council regarding traffic issues. Situations do change and perhaps now is the right time to put Hull Road back on the agenda. It will need to be assessed and the causes of collisions analysed so we can identify precisely what the problems are.

It may be once that has been done that a single solution is not enough - we may need a range of solutions.

We need to remember that it is not the roads that cause collisions - it is the people who use them.

The best thing local people can do in the meantime is to make sure they themselves drive below the speed limit.

I'm not saying it is they who are speeding: some of the motorists driving too quickly will be local, some will be from outside the city.

But by ensuring they drive within the speed limit themselves, they set a good example and they also limit the speed of those driving behind them.

:: Camera types

There are a number of speed camera and speed-trap systems in use on British roads. They include the following:

The fixed-position Gatso camera uses a flash to capture offending drivers from behind on film. They are often located near, or behind, signs or bridges. Many drivers, however, have pleaded that they weren't driving the car and the image can't prove otherwise.

The Truvelo forward- facing camera is designed to take photographs of the front of a passing vehicle, so capturing the driver of the vehicle as well to aid prosecution. Sensors in the road calculate the speed and the infra-red camera captures the car registration number and driver picture. No flash is omitted because the system uses infra-red light.

Lasers are the most popular mobile method of entrapment. A laser can operate at a distance of a mile to a mile and a half and is very accurate and very fast. A police officer records the motorist's speed and number plate automatically within a few seconds. Typical sites for a laser trap include motorway bridges, vans at the side of the road and mounted or hand-held tripods.

Updated: 10:43 Tuesday, July 26, 2005