RIDING PAST a speed camera and wondering how much money it rakes in is something many of us will have thought about at some point.
Now thanks to a series of Freedom of Information requests submitted to the UK’s largest county police constabularies by Carole Nash, we know where the UK's five highest earning cameras are and how much they earnt the government over the course of a year.
The information returned from the requests reveal which speed cameras have caught the most instances of motorists breaking the speed limit during the course of a year. Importantly, they also highlight the area where it’s worth your while paying extra attention to your speedo.
The locations and earnings are as follows:
- A1 / Great Ponton North Bound, Lincolnshire - £606,400
- M180 West of River Trent, Scunthorpe - £583,500
- M25 junction 17-18, Rickmansworth - £538,500
- M25 between junction 5 and Clacket Lane Services - £373,300
- A12 Stratford St Mary Southbound - £305,400
The stretch of the A1, just south of Grantham in Lincolnshire racked up the most fines in the UK by bringing in an average of £1,661 a day in just one year, making it one of the most lucrative cameras in the country.
Motorcycclists and drivers travelling along the M180 close to Scunthorpe are also prone to speeding, with a camera on this stretch of road, west of the River Trent, capturing 5,853 speeding offences in a year, totalling £583,500.
You probably won’t be surprised to find Britain’s busiest (and most hellish) motorway, the M25 making a double appearance in this list. A camera between junctions 17 and 18 near Rickmansworth was responsible for 5,385 speeding tickets in one year, with motorists traveling an average of 62mph in the 50mph zone. A camera between junction 5 and Clacket Lane Services was responsible for 3,723 fines to motorists who were averaging 61 mph on this 50 mph stretch of road.
When Carole Nash asked Sargent Mark D Lucas of the Metropolitan Police Service whether he thought speed cameras have helped deter speeding he said:
‘Yes! Cameras will also pay for themselves several times over in the money saved to the economy by preventing deaths and serious injuries: road crashes were estimated to cost the economy £16.3 billion in 2014 due to human costs and costs to emergency, health and criminal justice services. Cameras can catch far higher numbers of speeding motorists than traffic police with mobile cameras, and at much lower cost, freeing up police for other duties that cannot be conducted by technology, such as breath-testing.’
Sargeant Lucas also stated that in 2016, police forces across the UK recorded an average of 56,080 speeding offences. That’s a 20% increase on the average of 46,905 per force recorded in 2013, which could be seen to contradict his assertion that speed cameras help deter speeding.
Click here to read the full interview.
Image: David Dixon, under licence from Creative Commons
