The UK is looking to seriously upgrade its traffic camera system. How much ? Well right now sporadically placed cameras are used to catch speeders and CCTV cameras are used to track general traffic. What they want to do is get a camera every 1/4 mile or so on the road that has the ability to recognize license plate numbers and store there activity... IE which cameras they are seen on. And store the record for two years. Nominally it is to crack down on the use of uninsured/untaxed cars, it will almost certainly be used to monitor speeding offenses as well along with the more nebulous idea of denying the use of the roads to criminals.
Can this system do some good things ? Yes I suppose so. However all the talk here is of ways to collect more money for the government. Lets see... expensive system, it generates money, more expensive system, generate even more money. This is a bad cycle. Traffic monitoring needs to be more about providing a benifit to the tax payers. Not a burden of ever increasing and often arbitrary infraction penalties. I would feel better about the implementation of this tech if they were talking about how such omnicient monitoring tied to individual vehicle information, situation and road conditions could be combined with a car communication system to create an interactive and adaptable traffic safety system. IE two way communications with the cars so that it can warn drivers of unsafe conditions, overspeed, tailgating etc... BEFORE hitting them up for money because they strayed 6 mph over an arbitraty speed limit instead of just 5. You could have enough information to be able to say that someone driving 100 on a deserted motorway is not being unsafe when someone weaving through rush hour traffic at 40 is being unsafe. How about since the system is automatic, reducing the burden on sending notices why not use it to issue warnings to uninsured/untaxed vehicles giving people a fair chance to recitfy the situation before penalizing them.
Just in general, traffic fines are not supposed to be a relied upon revenue. No budget should EVER be allocated on the basis of collection of penalties due to law infringement. It is a direct conflict of interests. If you are allowed to earmark and rely on money you make from such sources it provides a vested interest in seeing that those infractions occur. For example setting an arbitrary speed limit that has the impossible task of defining what is a safe speed of operation for all vehicles, in all conditions. I for one think that all penalties should be returned to the public at large, or at least subtracted from the tax requirements. There should be NO incentive for the government to collect penalties from infractions.
The record of vehicle location information over 2 years is frankly scary as hell. There are serious abuses available there if you keep its access limited and serious abuses available if it is open. I just am not sure I could be convinced the good outweighs the bad. On the one hand the system could potentialy obsolete car theifs in one fail swoop. On the other if access to the data is restricted you will have little or no recourse in the event of a false positive or worse yet out right fradulent charges generated by those who control it. Its the old who watches the watchers issue.
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