Decisions by highway authorities on speed controls and similar measures are often driven by accident statistics – and the number of deaths and injuries on a particular road, or at a particular junction. But speeding statistics (recorded by cameras or other devices) are also important.
However these cost money – but residents are active in local villages collecting their own figures, and “Speedwatching” has now won an award.
The Sussex Community Speedwatch initiative (CSW) has just been announced as the first Technical Innovation Award winner of the Lord Ferrers Award – open to a wide range of “policing” volunteers.
CSW has developed an internet-based application and web-platform to manage speedwatch activity, now covering some 2,500 plus trained volunteers.
This, in simple terms and from a police viewpoint, means that volunteers in somewhere like Winchelsea, for example, can collect data on a “speedster” who may prove from CSW’s data collected elsewhere to be a persistent “speedster”. This can be brought to the police’s attention as a possible “hazard” and the driver traced through his/her number plate – the local Speedwatch having collected the evidence for a possible conviction.
Local “speedwatchers” in high-vis gear themselves cause drivers to slow down and also try to warn other drivers of a “hazard” ahead (as I witnessed in a local village near Northiam this summer).
Local residents eager to tackle local traffic problems, and feeling frustrated by “requests for evidence”, may therefore turn to Speedwatch in increasing numbers as a way to get action – other than signs which appear to get ignored. (Source: CSW)
Photo: Rye News Library
Photo: Rye News Library