Embarrassment for speed camera authorities

Speed camera bosses face the embarrassment of being forced to admit that cameras costing hundreds of thousands of pounds have not caught a single offender. 

From April camera authorities will be required to publish data including casualty rates, vehicle speeds and the number of prosecutions at each site under proposals announced by the Department for Transport.  

It’s likely to lead to questions about why the country’s first set of bike-catching average speed cameras, installed last March at a cost to the taxpayer of £800,000, have not resulted in a single prosecution nearly a year later.

MCN revealed in April that the cameras could not work because of an oversight.

They are supposed calculate average speeds based on the time it takes a vehicle to get from one installation to the next on the A537 Cat & Fiddle road from Macclesfield in Cheshire to Buxton, Derbyshire. But they take no account of a shortcut which leaves and rejoins the A537, shortening the distance between cameras and rendering the calculation impossible.

The situation has been a source of embarrassment to Cheshire East Council, which issued a press release hailing the cameras a success and making no mention of the fact they don’t function.

For more on this, and to read about other non-functioning cameras, get MCN, on sale January 12.