Road speed limit enforcement in the United Kingdom is the action taken by appropriately empowered authorities to attempt to persuade road vehicle users to comply with the speed limits in force on the UK's roads. Methods used include those for detection and prosecution of contraventions such as roadside fixed speed cameras, average speed cameras, and police-operated LIDAR speed guns or older radar speed guns. Vehicle activated signs and Community Speed Watch schemes are used to encourage compliance. Some classes of vehicles are fitted with speed limiters and intelligent speed adaptation is being trialled in some places on a voluntary basis.
During 2006/7 a total of 1.75 million drivers had their licenses endorsed with 3 penalty points and £114 million was raised from fines; an 'e-petition' to ban speed cameras during 2007 received 28,000 signatures. The Department for Transport estimated that cameras had led to a 22% reduction in personal injury collisions and 42% fewer people being killed or seriously injured at camera sites. Injury Prevention reported that speed cameras were effective at reducing accidents and injuries in their vicinity and recommended wider deployment. An LSE study in 2017 found that "adding another 1,000 cameras to British roads could save up to 190 lives annually, reduce up to 1,130 collisions and mitigate 330 serious injuries."
In May 2010 the new Coalition government pledged to scrap public funding for speed cameras and cut the Road Safety Grant from £95 million to £57 million. Opposition politicians and some road safety campaigners claimed that lives were being put at risk. A survey conducted by The Automobile Association said that use of speed cameras was supported by 75% of their members.
Rationale Enforcement is used to increase compliance with speed limits.
One of the main motivations for enforcement is to reduce road casualties, particularly at accident blackspots. For 2008, "exceeding the speed limit" was reported as one of the contributory factors in 5% of all casualty collisions (14% of fatal collisions resulting in 15% of all deaths).Department for Transport (2009), p. 45 "Exceeding the speed limit was reported as a contributory factor in 5 per cent of all accidents. However, the factor became more significant with the severity of the accident. It was reported in 14 per cent of fatal accidents and these accidents accounted for 362 fatalities, 15 per cent of all deaths"
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents estimates that a pedestrian has a 90% chance of surviving being hit by a car at 20 mph, falling to 50% chance at 30 mph and to 10% at 40 mph. The government noted that the change from "mainly survivable injuries to mainly fatal injuries" takes place at speeds between 30 and 40 mph. One third of drivers thought that the chances of a pedestrian dying if hit at 40 mph was 50% or less. Parliament noted that most deaths of pedestrian occurred in urban areas (where the speed limit ranges from 20 to 40 mph).
A 2003 survey of drivers for the Department for Transport found that 58% break speed limits on 30 mph roads and 25% break them by more than 5 mph. 57% break speed limits on motorways and 20% break them by more than 10 mph. In 2002 the Select Committee on Transport stated that "Most drivers and pedestrians think speeds are generally too high but 95 per cent of all drivers admit to exceeding them".
Groups most likely to speed excessively are those driving in a work related capacity, members of high income households and young males. Motorcyclists also frequently speed as do HGV drivers commonly on single carriageway main roads where their speed limit is 50 mph.
Methods
There are many methods used by authorities, in places where the speed limits are not generally observed, to attempt to achieve greater compliance. These methods generally fall into one of two categories:
to attempt to identify drivers or vehicles that are breaking the speed limit for the purposes of prosecution, to remind vehicle users what the speed limit is, and that it should be obeyed.
There are several types of speed camera in use. Speed cameras must be calibrated and undergo Home Office Type Approval before the images from it are acceptable to the court, including the cameras used in police vehicles. Owners of vehicles photographed may be contacted with a 'Notice of Intended Prosecution' (NIP) requiring them to provide the name and address of the driver. If they do not provide this information they may receive a Court summons for 'Failing to Furnish Driver Details'. "Higher speeds" result in prosecution by way of a 'Conditional Offer Fixed Penalty' which can be settled by accepting a £100 fine and three penalty points. "Excessive speed offences" are automatically sent to the court.
Fixed instantaneous speed cameras
These cameras are installed beside a road and record the instantaneous speed of vehicles and a photograph of vehicles that have been identified as breaking the speed limit. There are two types commonly in use:
Gatso cameras, which take a photograph of the rear of the vehicle after the vehicle has passed, Truvelo / D-cam digital cameras which use infrared to take a picture of a vehicle as it approaches, which includes an image of the driver. These cameras then transmit the image and speed to the authorities virtually instantly.
Police operated equipment Police officers can use LIDAR speed guns or sometimes the older and less accurate radar speed guns to gather evidence for prosecution. These may be operated from temporary static sites or from within police vehicles.
Average speed cameras Known as the SPECS system, these cameras measure average speeds over a known or measured distance. The first average speed camera in Scotland was installed on the A77 road in 2004.
Vehicle activated signs
Vehicle activated signs that illuminate to indicate to a driver that they are exceeding the speed limit – these do not result in the issuance of a penalty, merely serve as a warning.
Community Speed Watch Community Speed Watch is a partnership between local people, the Police, the Fire Service and local councils. Volunteers spend a short time each week monitoring speeds and noting number plates. Those identified as speeding are sent a warning letter and the police will take further action if the same vehicle is identified as speeding three times. Community Speed Watch is only permitted for speed limits of 40 mph or below. Junior Speed Watch works in a similar way but involves schoolchildren.
Speed limiters Some classes of vehicles are required to have speed limiters which enforce a maximum speed by physical means. New vehicles should be fitted with limiters as follows. Buses and coaches: HGVs: Department for Transport (2008), p.181 "Speed limiter settings lowered to 70 mph for new buses and coaches and to 60 mph for HGVs." Mopeds: Department for Transport (2008), p.179 "Mopeds redefined to 30 mph maximum design speed" Older vehicles still in use do not have limiters fitted or have them set at a higher speeds. These devices do not enforce speed limits as they do not adapt to speed limit changes.
Speed triggered traffic lights In 2011, Swindon borough council trialled installing equipment on some of their traffic light systems so that they will turn to red early if a car is detected travelling above a preset speed on the approach. A Swindon councillor is reported to have said, "The whole key is to monitor driver behaviour without beating them over the head. … It may annoy them, but I think eventually people will work out that if they maintain a constant speed at or around the speed limit then actually their journey times will be much shorter because they won't be getting delayed by traffic lights." The RAC Foundation gave a cautious welcome to the trial. Similar systems are already in use in Spain and Portugal.
Intelligent speed adaptation A trial of intelligent speed adaptation is available in London. Drivers can install free software in their TomTom GPS sat-nav units to provide a warning if they are exceeding the speed limit. In addition a 'voluntary ISA' system which uses technology installed in the vehicle which makes it difficult to accidentally accelerate beyond the speed limit is being developed. This technology is expected to be available on a voluntary basis with no current plans for vehicles to be required to be fitted with it.
TASCAR TASCAR stands for Temporary Automatic Speed Camera at Road works, and is the term used by the Highways Agency and other relevant organisations for speed enforcement at works carried out by or on behalf of the agency on the UK road network.Highways Agency, Speed Limit Enforcement at Road Works: Guidance and Best Practice, Issue B, July 2006.
Different rules apply for the placement of these cameras than for cameras used for general enforcement elsewhere.
Effectiveness
Speed cameras
An LSE study in 2017 found that speed cameras reduced fatalities by 58 to 68% within 500 metres of the cameras and "adding another 1,000 cameras to British roads could save up to 190 lives annually, reduce up to 1,130 collisions and mitigate 330 serious injuries."
A 2013 study by the RAC found a 27% reduction in fatal and serious collisions in the vicinity of speed cameras.
In 2001 the Nottingham Safety Camera Pilot achieved "virtually complete compliance" on the major ring road into the city using average speed cameras, across all Nottinghamshire SPECS installations, KSI (Killed / Seriously Injured) figures have fallen by an average of 65%.
In 2003, Injury Prevention reported that speed cameras were effective at reducing accidents and injuries and recommended wider deployment. In February 2005 the British Medical Journal again reported that speed cameras were an effective intervention in reducing road traffic collisions and related casualties, noting however that most studies to date did not have satisfactory control groups. In 2003 Northumbria Police's Acting Chief Inspector of motor patrols suggested that cameras didn't reduce casualties but did raise revenue – an official statement from the police force later re-iterated that speed cameras do reduce casualties.
In December 2005 the Department for Transport published a four-year report into Safety Camera Partnerships which concluded that there was a 22% reduction in personal injury collisions and 42% fewer people being killed or seriously injured following the installation of cameras. The Times reported that this research showed that the department had been previous exaggerating the safety benefits of speed cameras but that the results were still 'impressive'.
A report published by the RAC Foundation in 2010 estimated that an additional 800 more people a year could be killed or seriously injured on the UK's roads if all speed cameras were scrapped. A survey conducted by The Automobile Association in May 2010 indicated that speed cameras were supported by 75% of their members.
In 2017, the first average speed camera system on an urban road in Scotland began operating. In the following year, there were no crashes resulting in an injury (compared to six in the three years 2013–2015) and the number of speeding offences dropped from three in every five vehicles to around two per day (out of around 15,000 vehicles per day).
There is also evidence against the efficacy of speed cameras. Within four years of Swindon abandoning the use of fixed speed cameras, arguing that the cost did not represent an effective way to reduce road accidents, the town was the safest town to drive in the UK, based on accident rates per 1,000 registered vehicles: a result linked by the Local Authority Member for Council Transformation, Transport and Strategic Planning to the removal of speed cameras and resultant additional funding for road safety, alongside close working with the police.
Vehicle activated signs