I couldn’t agree more. Camera technology with ANPR is now so good that it can be used to enforce the speed limit very easily without diverting increasingly scarce police resources. The problem is a lack of political will at the top level and a reluctance to upset motorists. Philip Hammond’s first statement as the new Transport Secretary in 2010 was that he was going to ‘end the war on the motorist’. He quickly moved on, but the DfT has never quite recovered from this rash promise. The withdrawal of funding was announced by Mike Penning in the Commons in June 2010. I suspect that much of the existing camera network, away from the HE roads and motorways, is now old and ineffective. My local attempts to extend the siting of fixed cameras to well-known speeding hotspots, backed up by extensive data from Community Speed Watch, have been rejected by the local camera partnership (Kent and Medway) who stick rigidly to the rule that no cameras can be installed unless the site in question has had at least three serious injury crashes in three years. They say their hands are tied by government policy but I doubt this is the case.
I hope you have submitted evidence to the current Commons Transport Committee inquiry into road traffic enforcement on these issues.