The great speed ticketing sham

If you want to drive fast, stay out of Wales and London and head to Surrey. The Department for Transport has released figures on the amount of money it has raised from speeding tickets over the last year. Surprisingly, there were fewer tickets issued last year than on the previous year. Good news I hear you say. You would have thought - but good news for you is not good news for the chancellor's coffers. Less speeding tickets issued means less fines means less money to plough back in to society (ahem!). Wrong. Incredibly, the government has managed to increase revenue through speeding tickets despite the drop in actual offences. You didn't think the government would actually let revenue drop, did you, even if we were becoming more speed conscious? Yet more proof that these measures are about the denero and not about stopping us from getting our 0-60 personal bests. Drivers paid £114.6 million in fines in the 2005/06 financial year - one per cent more than in 2004/05.There was also some interesting discrepancies in the figures - a speeding lottery is emerging.

Amazingly, some counties are now claiming 100% success rates in converting speeding notices in to £60 fines. Have the British public given up in fighting back against the jobsworths and bureaucrats? This wouldn't happen in France. It doesn't happen in Surrey either, where they are only managing a "success" rate of 47%. Who would have thought Surrey would become the centre of the "Free English". Strangely, the money collected by Greater Manchester increased 43 per cent in 2005/06, while Derbyshire took 26 per cent less money. Not sure how these discrepancies occur, but it is safe to say the methods of getting motorists to pay up are not an exact science.

The most money collected was in London - £9.45 million. Dividing the amount collected by the total population put North Wales at the top of the speed camera fine table, with £5.82 raised for each resident. Yet in Merseyside residents paid out just 80p per head in fines. Now, either the speed demons of Wales are seven times more likely to break the speed limit than those in Merseyside and rightly fined accordingly, or something isn't right with the current system. I have a sneaking suspicion the good people of Liverpool aren't -that- road friendly and that the speed camera and fining system in this country is a sham.