Scamera van numbers up by 34.5 per cent

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The number of working mobile road speed cameras rose by 34.5 per cent compared to the previous 12 months, according to data released by Cyclops, maker of a GPS-based driver alert system. The report follows PistonHeads's story last Thursday about the £20 million raised by speed cameras last year -- a seven-fold increase (see link below).

The largest concentration of mobile sites, those patrolled by radar or laser operated speed cameras, are to be found in the south-east (including Metropolitan, Sussex, Thames Valley and police forces of the home counties) with 17.6 per cent of the national total. The south west region, including Avon & Somerset and Devon & Cornwall, currently has the second highest with 16.6 percent. The lowest numbers are to be found in Scotland with 8.7 per cent of the national total.

"Although there was a marked slowdown in the appearance of new fixed Gatso, Truvelo and SPECS camera sites over the past twelve months, the opposite has been true of mobile patrols operated by Road Safety Partnerships," said Cyclops director Steve Wreford.

Updated daily by a nationwide network of engineers, the Cyclops database contains details of every fixed, temporary and mobile speed camera site in the UK. As the driver nears a site, they automatically receive an audible and visual warning from a dashboard-mounted unit. This alert can be up to 800 metres before the controlled zone allowing drivers to safely adjust their speed as they approach.

Under the rules governing the positioning of mobile locations, proposed sites of between 0.4km to 5km in length, must have recorded at least 2 KSI (Killed or Serious Injury) collisions per kilometre within a monitored 36-month period where speed was a contributory factor or sufficient PIC’s (Personal Injury Collisions) to warrant avoiding a possible future KSI. Criteria for fixed cameras are doubled whereby each site must record at least 4 KSI’s over the same ‘baseline period’.

Wreford warns: "At the current rate of growth, we could have as many mobile camera locations as fixed sites by the end of 2005."

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