trazor said:
Well, the contradiction is, that if speed cameras are so successful, why is ALL the money generated, not ploughed back into road safety.
I have no idea why, and clearly you don't either, but how and when did a question to which you and I don't know the answer become termed a "contradiction"?
Why should the treasury benefit ......
You seem to regard the Treasury as some selfish and independent entity that takes money and keeps it, perhaps to spend on DVDs and take-away meals. In reality, or at least in my reality, the Treasury funds public spending on things that I consider to be for the general good. For example, I'm pretty sure (but I admit that I haven't checked), that the Treasury funds major road building and other national infrastructural projects.
In any case, whatever the Treasury does spend its money on, apart from some proportion of it being siphoned off to spend on things that are unsavoury or undeclared, I'm sure that the country is quite an expensive thing to run, and that it always has been.
Regarding your second point, better ways of traffic calming exist, without fining drivers....
You seem to be saying that, because you think better ways of traffic calming exist, the use of cameras was created, and/or continues to be used, in the full knowledge that it was/is the most profitable.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that the drivers who are prosecuted and fined are those who have been
caught speeding, i.e. have not been forced to speed by the existence of cameras.
If you want to argue that cameras are now perceived by the government as an efficient source of income, then I might be tempted to agree with you. Personally I see it as a tax on the persistently stupid and selfish. Old cash-strapped grannies who don't drive, to name but one demographic group, don't ever get caught speeding, nor do they have to fund the system that detects the people who do.
It seems very fair to me that money
generated by the system that detects bad drivers, rather the alternative of the government making a net loss on investing in methods of calming that would yield no direct revenue.
