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Speeding drivers to pay for road safety schemes
EXCLUSIVE: Huge numbers of Yorkshire motorists will end up funding road safety schemes from their own pockets in a new controversy over speeding penalties.
Courses costing 75 offered to speeding drivers instead of a fine and penalty points make massive profits – up to 500,000 in South Yorkshire, it can be revealed.
The "staggering" amount raised has reignited the row over drivers facing sanctions as a money-making exercise,
The Government originally allowed speed camera partnerships to claim back the money they generated in fines but scrapped the scheme amid fears it gave the operators a financial – rather than a safety – motive to prosecute more offenders.
Now the three safety camera partnerships which operate
in the region have all admitted that they are to make a profit from the classes designed to educate drivers about the perils of speed.
They are all planning to substantially increase the number of these "speed awareness" courses offered to first-time offenders instead of a fine. Thousands of drivers a month in Yorkshire will be offered the option in future.
The Association of British Drivers (ABD) has raised concern motorists will be expected to underwrite safety projects which might otherwise have got conventional local or central government funding.
A change in Government regulations has prompted the situation and profits from the speed awareness courses are expected to be spent on road safety schemes. ABD spokesman Nigel Humphries described projected profits from speed awareness courses as "staggering".
He added: "These little quangos are self-perpetuating and as soon as one funding loophole is closed off another one is found. Although some of the content of these speed awareness events is useful, a lot of it is not, and those people who are forced to go on the courses are often not the ones who need the guidance.
"Those who are caught are usually those who have been snapped by speed cameras which have been placed where the speed limit has been set cynically low. It just leaves people angry. The partnerships will say they are not profiteering, but while some of this cash will go on road safety, our suspicion is that it will also go on fact-finding trips and employing more civil servants."
In South Yorkshire it is anticipated the surplus from the courses will provide up to 500,000 a year, so much the county's safety camera partnership is having to introduce a policy to dictate how it is spent.
North Yorkshire does not have a camera partnership and firm figures are not available for West Yorkshire and the Humber area, but both are expecting to put more drivers through the courses and also expect profits.
The arrangement which saw safety camera partnerships retain income from fines ended in 2007 in a bid to end the argument that cameras were a source of income.
Safer Roads Humber, which runs speed cameras in East Yorkshire, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire, said 1,000 drivers a month would be referred to courses. "That is also expected to increase as time goes on. What happens is that once all the costs of the course are taken out, we are left with a surplus. That will then be ploughed back into Road Safety Humber, and the money will be used for our road safety projects, such as Bike Safe and initiatives with young motorists or people who drive for work.
"We have actually had some very positive feedback from drivers who have been on the course. At first they might be a bit miffed, but then they realise they have learned something about how they drive."
Ken Wheat, transportation unit manager for Rotherham Council, which leads in South Yorkshire on road safety, said the cash would be made available for road safety projects. He rejected claims that the courses were designed to generate profit.
"This money will not just be spent on running speed cameras. We will be asking other partners to bid into this cash to secure funding for other road safety projects. We are not actually out to catch people, we just want to slow them down... But clearly we will never satisfy everybody.
"There will always be a view expressed that we are persecuting the motorist. But I don't accept that and this is a case in point. We are not fining people, we are educating them."
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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