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he Facts from Drive There Driving School - About Speeding 

Okay, so everyone hates getting caught on camera. However, safety cameras are good at reducing vehicle speeds and cutting down the number of crashes.

  

Only drivers breaking the speed limit, and therefore breaking the law, get caught.

 

 

Speed is a major cause of road crashes. The faster you drive a car the longer it will take you to stop. If you don’t stop in time then you were travelling too fast. The faster you hit something, the greater the effect of the impact.

 

If you're driving at 35mph you're twice as likely to kill someone as you're at 30mph.

 

 

 

Speed limits
A speed limit is the maximum speed you can drive at, however you have to use your common sense as the speed limit isn't always the safe speed. Driving too fast doesn’t always mean going over the speed limit. It can mean driving at a speed that's not safe for the road conditions.

 

For example, driving at 30mph along a busy shopping street with lots of people around is too fast. Because of this problem, the 20mph limit is being used more and more in built up areas, especially around schools and on residential streets. 

 

 

Fixed safety cameras


All fixed site safety cameras are easy to see and are placed at locations where there's likely to be a safety benefit. Their main purpose is to slow the traffic down in areas where there have been a lot of road accidents.

 

 

                                            

 

                              

 

 

 

Average speed cameras


These are used on long stretches of road and record the number plates of all vehicles as they pass the camera. The time a vehicle takes to travel between two cameras can then be worked out and what its average speed has been. If this exceeds the speed limit for that road, the driver has committed an offence.

                                                  

             

 

 

 

Mobile safety cameras

As well as fixed sites there are mobile safety camera units. These are used to enforce speed limits in-between the fixed sites. They're particularly useful in reducing the 'halo effect' around the fixed site, where drivers slow down for the camera and speed up after it.

 

 

                  

 

   

     

 

 

    

 

  The risk of an accident rises the faster you drive. At 25% above the average speed, a driver is 

about 6 times more likely to have an accident than a driver travelling at the average speed.

 

Penalties
These depend on the seriousness of the offence. The majority of speeding offences result in a £60 fine and 3 penalty points. Fines of up to £2500 however are possible along with disqualification for the more extreme cases.

 

Safety cameras have already been shown to save lives throughout the country: 

  • Instances of personal injury fell by 64% at fixed safety camera sites.
  • 67% drop in fatalities at fixed safety camera sites.
  • Average speeds of vehicles at the sites have fallen by 8% or 4.2 mph.
  • Government research reveals that a reduction of 1% in the average speed of vehicles will lead to a 5% reduction in casualties.
  • Average speed cameras have proved very effective in reducing speeds over longer distances.

 

 

 

Here's a guide to the different speed limits:

Built up areas

  • Cars: 30mph  

Single carriageways

  • Cars: 60mph

Dual carriageways

  • Cars: 70mph

Motorways

  • Cars: 70mph

       

 

 

 

 

Make yourself aware of these locations and slow down

- not because of the cameras -

but because it saves lives.