[bigiain]

Perhaps we should acknowledge that a simple single number "your speed" is a significantly flawed measure of the level of risk you're exposing the rest of society to, and while speed enforcement is a good _revenue_ generator, it does not do nearly as much to reduce the full range of risk behaviours as we might desire.

What continually boggles me is seeing people lose their drivers licence for 6 months or more for a string of speeding tickets - without having actually had an accident, while I read newspaper stories about people who actually do crash and hurt of kill someone receiving more lenient sentences.

How about we start punishing people who actually have and/or cause "accidents" rather that people we claim are increasing the risk of accidents by exceeding some arbitrarily set limit? Sure doing 90 past a school is "wrong", as is driving in a way that causes someone else to crash, but surely we're at a point where technology can help there - for less than $100 I could have 4 video cameras with ~1hr of recording time fitted to my car. Is it a crazy idea to say we encourage people to record other drivers, and pay them a commission on the fines their cameras generate from actual risk events, rather than risk behaviours?

(Full disclosure: I'm a motorcyclist. I enjoy going fast. I'm fully prepared to accept responsibility for my actions, and in one sense I don't mind current speed enforcement since my personal opinion is I'm happy to go fast where it doesn't affect anyone else, and if I _do_ get "caught" speeding it's a sign that I wasn't paying enough attention - if there was someone in position to catch me speeding I shouldn't have been speeding there. I'm not happy with cops who "hide" while doing speed enforcement, but I've also never been caught by one hiding...)