HOT NEWS

Push for tighter speed limits as Queensland's road toll soars

QUEENSLAND'S shocking January road toll has led to calls for the state's speed camera tolerance - the highest in the nation - to be lowered.

Road safety experts say the "unpublished" tolerance is so widely spoken about among drivers that they often ignore the posted limit and drive to a speed they know will not land them with a fine.

Police will not reveal how much leeway Queensland drivers are given for road safety reasons but The Courier-Mail understands it is more than any other state.

Queensland Police, who are responsible for setting the tolerance, have not ruled out a change.

In Victoria, motorists are given a widely publicised leeway of 3km/h before they are picked up by speed cameras, while in NSW, information released last year by the Office of State Revenue showed motorists were being fined for breaking the limit by as little as 1km/h.

The Tasmanian Government dropped its tolerance from 10km/h above the speed limit to an undisclosed figure in 2010, bringing in an extra $2 million in its first year.

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Canberra - Lightning strike delays cameras

A LIGHTNING strike has given some speeding Canberra drivers a month's grace.

Point-to-point cameras on the territory's roads will not start working for another month because cameras were struck by a bolt of lightning during a thunderstorm in December.

The cameras were located near the intersection of Hindmarsh Drive and Mugga Way at Red Hill.

While the destroyed cameras were quickly replaced, the connection between the cameras and loop detector set into the road surface was damaged.

The cameras subsequently failed testing by an independent body earlier this month.

ACT transport regulation acting senior director Brett Swale said the problem had been fixed and now awaited the green light from certifiers Societe Generale de Surveillance Australia before becoming operational in late February.

The certification process will take place in the coming weeks and involves a test vehicle, mounted with a timing unit, passing through the detection points.

The recorded times are then checked to ensure the devices are accurate within a tolerance of 2per cent.

Mr Swale also moved to allay concerns the speed cameras had no margin for error.

Motorists have raised concerns that mid-2006 changes in the Australian Design Standards for speedometers could mean that Canberrans driving early model cars could be slugged with a fine through dodgy readings.

While he could not reveal the margin for error allowed in ACT speed traps, Mr Swale said Canberrans should not fear if they stick to the set limits.

''All traffic cameras in the ACT, including point-to-point cameras, take into account a small margin of driver error,'' Mr Swale said.

''If people drive within the speed limit then they won't have a problem.''

Mr Swale urged motorists to get their vehicle's speedometer checked if they were concerned about faulty readings.

Western Australia - Car Camera Blitz Planned

The number of cars scanned for speeding in WA would increase from 14 million to almost 300 million a year under a police plan to have roof-mounted speed cameras on 48 traffic patrol vehicles.

Supt Lance Martin said police were developing the technology which they wanted to fit to the new vehicles, with a view to eventually installing the devices on dozens more cars.

He said the roof-mounted radars would work like roadside devices and would turn the cars into roaming speed cameras.

Police aimed to develop the technology to a point where it could measure the speed of each vehicle it passed, enabling each police car to monitor about 1200 vehicles an hour or 6 million a year.

The State's speed cameras monitored a total of 13.8 million cars last financial year, reaping more than $60 million in fines.

The radars would be linked to roof-mounted video cameras which would film the speeding driver and send the evidence to the police infringement management section, which would then post out fines.

Police currently have 190 in-car speed radars in traffic vehicles across the State.

But they do not take photographic or video evidence of speeding offences, meaning that police have to pursue the speeding vehicle, stop it and write out an infringement.

The car-mounted radars would add to WA Police's big fleet of speed enforcement devices, which includes 16 roadside cameras, 14 hand-held radars, 28 integrated red light and speed cameras and seven cameras used covertly from the back of unmarked vehicles parked by the roadside. Supt Martin said the planned radar systems would be a significant deterrent against speeding.

"When people see our brightly coloured traffic cars around the city or the country they will be reminded of the radars they have and that will reinforce to them the risk they take when they speed," he said.

"It's important that drivers who are inclined to speed feel that they could be caught for speeding at any time."

He said police had asked the State Government for funding to buy the 48 new traffic cars, which were laden with other technology including automatic numberplate recognition systems which scanned an average of 1200 plates an hour.

Each car would cost $70,000 to kit out with the technology and custom fittings.

Police Minister Rob Johnson said the funding request would be considered "as part of the normal budgetary and Cabinet process".

"In the past three Budgets, I have managed to secure record funding for WA Police, which has enabled them to equip our officers with the latest technology," he said.

Queensland - Green light for more speed cameras

Alison Sandy Courier Mail

EVEN more hi-tech speed cameras will be rolled out to target speeding motorists, as new figures show police nabbed more than one leadfoot every minute last year on Queensland roads.

Despite the introduction of covert mobile speed cameras and the addition of more fixed speed cameras, police caught more than 1800 speedsters a day last year - about 75 every hour and a rise of 200 a day from the year before.

Police say the only way to change bad driver behaviour would be through the hip pocket, with more speeding infringements arriving in the mail.

State Traffic Support branch's Superintendent Andy Morrow said the more people who unexpectedly received speeding tickets in the mail, the more they would stick to the speed limit.

As a result, police will be expanding the use of advanced speed cameras - including point-to-point, which calculates the speed of a vehicle from the time it takes to travel the distance between two points.

Supt Morrow said the covert technology meant it was becoming "increasingly difficult" to avoid speed cameras.

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Expert defends speed camera shutdown

The former head of the Roads and Traffic Authority's Road Safety Centre has defended a New South Wales Government decision to turn off a speed camera near the scene of a fatal north coast accident this week.

Two people, including an 11-year-old boy, died at Urunga on Sunday when a truck and utility crashed into a house.

Dr Soames Job says more speed cameras need to be installed across NSW.

However, he says switching off of the Urunga camera was justified.

"The data indicated that some cameras weren't giving us the road safety benefit we expected for various complex reasons," he said.

"There is a reasonableness to that.

"I think what is getting in the way is that there is a lot of media constantly saying that cameras are just for revenue, that speed cameras don't work, that speed cameras are inaccurate. All of those statements are false."

He says the Government should expand its point-to-point speed camera program, which he says is currently only used for trucks.