Motorists are overwhelmingly in favour of speed cameras also checking if motorists have the right documentation to be on the road. the current data from IAM RoadSmart’s annual safety culture report, found that out of 2,000 motorists surveyed, 89 per cent “support the use of safety cam technology to check for insurance, MOT and road tax offences.”
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It’s estimated that there are around 1 million uninsured motorists on UK roads and the motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB) approximates that every 20 minutes someone is injured by an uninsured driver. The MIB uses compensation to motorists who are hit by uninsured motorists and on average deals with 25,000 claims a year. To help secure motorists against uninsured motorists IAM Roadsmart proposes using speed cameras to help take illegal motorists off the road.
UK speed cam tolerances revealed: is your car’s speedo accurate?
Neil Greig, director of policy and research at IAM RoadSmart said the survey results support a zero-tolerance technique to uninsured drivers. He went on to add “the inconvenience, as well as pain and financial misery uninsured motorists often inflict on other road users must not be overlooked, indicating we must be doing all we can to deter and punish motorists who think the policies don’t apply to them. It is well known that enforcing ‘paperwork’ offences often leads to the detection of other a lot more severe crimes. This is why we support motorists in their calls for cameras to be used against those who breach the policies of the road.”
Currently, police patrol automobiles are fitted with Automatic Number Plate recognition (ANPR), while some static motorway cameras use the same technology. ANPR works by checking passing number plates against the motor insurance database (MID) to see if a car is insured. So far these methods have seen on average 130,000 cars seized annually between 2005 and 2020 according to the MIB. In 2020 the MIB dealt with over 26,000 victims of accidents involving uninsured drivers.
IAM RoadSmart’s report also showed 82 per cent of participants supported automatic speed cam fines for exceeding the limit by a lot more than 10mph in school zones and urban areas. 78 per cent backed a similar system for speeding in residential areas and 64 per cent for motorway speeding.
Can your car’s speedo be trusted? We reveal speed cam tolerances here…