POLICE motorbikes fitted with speed cameras are to be used to enforce road safety in Bristol and Somerset.
Three motorcycles will have the speed detection equipment fitted and will allow Avon and Somerset Police (ASP) to monitor areas its mobile camera vans are too large to access.
ASP currently have nine mobile camera vans in force which catch more than 66,000 speeding motorists every year.
A number of road-side cameras are also due to be switched back on across the region after they were deactivated in 2011 when the area’s safety camera partnership was dissolved.
Police and Crime Commissioner Sue Mountstevens said it’s ‘only right’ that her policing tactics tackle the issues that ‘most affect residents’ after explaining that road safety is the most common issue raised with her by locals.
The Alliance of British Drivers explained the move as ‘a retrograde step’ with a spokesperson saying ‘it will do nothing except alienate drivers,’
‘We need to re-examine a lot of our speed limits which have been reduced to a level where no one obeys them, and the police should become much more visible, as drivers behave more sensibly when there is a police presence’.
