Speeding, or as many know it, the tax you pay for having trying to get somewhere too fast or for trying to impress a hot girl on your date. Britain has been facing a long lasting battle against speeding fine penalties and it seems that drivers are no winners. There has been a spike in speeding penalties for so long that the spike has become the norm and more and more victims are being taken by our advanced British surveillance system. The national definition of a role code violation such as speeding is the usage of excessive speed for the prevailing conditions. The amount of legal cases undertaken against "prevailing conditions" has hit a four-year high for motorists since new digital cameras have been installed.
In 2012 it was reported that 20,000 offenders paid more than £75 million in speeding fines in the space of ten years. Motorists are charged for using their mobile phones, speeding, and not wearing a seatbelt, however speeding penalties top the fines list in the United Kingdom and this problem is on the rise. Statistics are harrowing; more than 2 million drivers receive penalty points and fines for speeding annually generating an estimated £130 million for government coffers. What does the government value? Does profit supersede motorists rights? Some cameras also misreport driving miles sometimes depicting 35 miles when the motorist has been driving at 33 miles for example.
Yes, speeding cameras are a necessary safety procedure for our society, but excessive violations are a sign of some kind of disconnect within the system.
Foreign cars from continental Europe continue to escape speeding penalties amounting to £4 million while Britons are stuck paying extortionate prices for violations that are distributed excessively. Many motorists are also sick of the deceptive nature of the famous yellow box. Driving ought to be a pleasant experience, not an experience of yellow box terror. Is it realistic to have a machine decide the overall fate of a human being? It is shown by the level of rising speeding fines that the yellow box is becoming more and more powerful. When is enough going to be enough? It is about time that people started standing up to the preposterous conditions for drivers on our roads.
The UK government might do well to take tips from Germany and the Netherlands which has produced inventive ways to deal with speeding and traffic violations. The traditional Dutch suburb-to-city system has been transformed by altering the city-to-city, city-to-suburb and suburb-to-suburb flows. The traffic management in the Netherlands has successfully managed to reduce overall congestion and speeding penalties in the country.
A lot of commentators consider speeding penalties to be a well-established tradition that doesn't seem to be changed in the foreseeable. What a shame it is that the spike in motorist violations sees no end for Britons. The government should consider the boundaries for penalties and alter the system to alleviate the rise in violations as well as better education on prevention, the problem is only set to get worse.