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.
"That's what I think the point-to-point cameras will achieve," he said. "If we get a few more of those set up around the state where we've experienced high crash rates in the past ... I reckon that would make a big difference."
Labor and the Liberal National Party yesterday committed to extra point-to-point camera sites.
The LNP suggested including key hot spots the Gold Coast, the Bruce Highway and far north Queensland.
Latest statistics show one in 10 drivers caught speeding were travelling more than 20km/h over the limit.
Despite the high rate of speeding, Police Minister Neil Roberts said the Government had evidence the point-to-point cameras' predecessor, the covert camera, was working because detection rates plummeted after the initial introduction.
He said the analogue fixed- speed camera on the Gold Coast Highway at Labrador detected 2500 speeding motorists in its first month of operation in October 2009.
Four months later, only about 500 were detected.
"It has introduced a level of uncertainty in the community about where speed enforcement will take place," Mr Roberts said.
"There will be additional speed camera sites and I would anticipate that would include point-to-point."
Mr Roberts said there was no specific proposal as to when or where the new point-to-point technology would go next, but police recently told The Courier-Mail provisions would be made for it to be introduced to the Airport Link tunnel. "There is a culture of speeding in this state which we simply have to break," he said.
The LNP has promised to roll out more point-to-point cameras if it wins government this year.
In 1998, the first full year speed cameras operated in Queensland, the state's road toll was below 300 - the only time it has been so low since 1955.
Queensland's only point-to-point camera system, which calculates the speed between two points about 14km apart, is on the Bruce Highway between Wild Horse Mountain and the Caloundra turn-off.