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The Times, October 03, 2005
By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent
BRITAIN'S most senior traffic policeman is seeking to change the rules on where speed cameras can be sited in order to enforce the limit on thousands of additional roads.
Richard Brunstrom, Chief Constable of North Wales, will announce today at the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) that he is standing down as head of roads policing.
In a valedictory interview with The Times , Mr Brunstrom admitted that he had failed to foresee the strength of public opposition to cameras and should have taken steps to reassure drivers that they were not simply money-making devices.
He has been lampooned by anti-camera campaigners for overseeing the huge growth in the number of cameras. There are now 6,000 sites and more than two million drivers were caught last year.
Mr Brunstrom remains convinced that cameras improve road safety and said he was working with the Department for Transport to reform the rules to allow far greater flexibility on where they can be used. He said a meeting last week of the Safety Camera Board, which includes the police and the Department for Transport, had discussed ending the requirement that fixed cameras can be installed on a road only after four crashes involving death or serious injuries. Mobile cameras can be used after two crashes.
Mr Brunstrom said: "Parents often write to us and ask us to put a camera outside a school because the traffic is so dangerous. It's very difficult to write back and say, 'Please let us know when your son is killed and then we can consider putting a camera there'."
He said the board was considering allowing cameras to be used at sites where there had been crashes which resulted in only slight injuries.
There were 38,000 deaths or serious injuries last year and 246,000 slight injuries.
Mr Brunstrom said: "If we changed the criteria to include slight injuries then the likelihood is we would have more camera sites. There is an emerging consensus that the time is now right to discuss revising the rules." But he said he remained opposed to random placement of cameras because that would erode public confidence in the fairness of the system. "We don't intend to have cameras strapped to every lamppost. There will be a lot more flexibility perhaps about where cameras are used but there won't necessarily be more cameras. We could use existing mobile cameras to enforce the new sites or we could put more camera housings up but have fewer cameras in them."
He said the rules were also likely to be eased to allow cameras to be used over much longer stretches of road. Mr Brunstrom said he was stepping down from his Acpo role "because it's time someone else had a go. It's always a mistake to stay beyond your sell-by date".
The leading contender to replace him is Med Hughes, Chief Constable of South Yorkshire. Mr Hughes is also a passionate advocate of speed cameras despite having two speeding convictions.
Mr Brunstrom said he regretted that he had not acted more quickly to introduce speed-awareness courses as an alternative to penalty points. "We didn't anticipate the continuing refusal by some people and some sections of the media to accept that cameras are not a stealth tax, but are about making roads safer.
"With hindsight, we could have taken the non-confrontational approach of offering courses to demonstrate that we are not after people's money."
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