Speed Camera News Unintended Consequences Cause Auto Insurance Rates To Rise?
Unintended Consequences Cause Auto Insurance Rates To Rise?
(drawing from UK site fighting Speed SCAMERAS www.safespeed.org.uk)
“Big Brother” is alive and well in George Orwell’s native land – and he may be causing auto insurance rates to rise even more for UK drivers, even if this is not his intention.
Consequence of a “Surveillance Society”
U.K. citizens are under more surveillance than any people in the Western World; there are cameras watching you wherever you go. Of course, these include traffic cameras. And a study that’s been ongoing since 2002 is now showing that these traffic cameras is are actually causing more accidents than they’re preventing.
The consequences for car insurance: UK drivers will wind up paying more for a product that is already becoming increasingly expensive every year.
A Distraction is a Distraction
The reason is that such cameras are a distraction – just as much as cell phones, fiddling with the radio/CD player or squabbling kids in the back seat. Several studies have demonstrated that such distractions can have the same effect on driving as being inebriated or under the influence of drugs.
This should come as no surprise: people inevitably behave differently when they know or believe they are being watched. This is demonstrated on U.S. highways all the time: when a police car is sitting on the side of the road and the officer is standing outside with a radar gun, traffic invariably slows.
Recently, U.K. auto insurance provider, Liverpool Victoria, conducted a survey showing that four out of every five drivers watch the speedometer instead of the road when they see a speed camera. According to managing director John O’Roarke, such cameras may cause drivers to reduce their speed (sometimes by hard braking, which can have disastrous consequences), but “…they also appear to impair driving ability or, at the least, concentration on the road.”
O’Roarke went on to say that the report “shows some drivers behave erratically and, at worst, dangerously around speed cameras.”
What About the U.S.?
Late last year, the state of Arizona began removing its speed cameras. The private corporation that operated the cameras, RedFlex Inc., was none too pleased; a representative for the company warned that there would be “a large increase in aggressive, dangerous driving.”
Instead, fatal accidents in Arizona are down significantly.
It was the same story in Swindon, U.K., which also eliminated its speeding cameras in December 2009.
Back to Auto Insurance Cost
Unfortunately for Britons, many of their local politicians, like their U.S. counterparts, are bought-and-paid-for by big money corporate interests – and some communities are going to be putting the cameras back up, despite the clear evidence that such cameras have cost nearly 300 lives on U.K. motorways since 2000.
As far as reining in those insurance costs, the best answer as always is to do a car insurance comparison. U.K. drivers will find this to be the most effective way to reduce the costs of covering their vehicles.
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