You’re Nicked!

For the benefit of our colonial cousins (!), ‘you’re nicked’ means you’ve been caught by a police officer. A phrase common in that 70s classic ‘The Sweeney’ (more funny English phrases - it’s rhyming slang for ‘Flying Squad’, a then special police task force), it came in to play in a very apposite way this week when the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire, Meredydd Hughes, was convicted of doing 90mph in a 60mph limit. And to add to the ‘joy’ of that, he was nicked on the patch of the ‘Traffic Taliban’ Richard Brunstrom, the outspoken, self proclaimed scourge of speeding motorists. So should we all laugh, and bask in the satisfaction of the downfall of the UK’s most senior traffic policeman being hoist by his own petard? Well, actually, no.

This entire saga, amusing though it is, actually illustrates perfectly all that is wrong with the policing of our roads. We have come to rely, for entirely financial reasons, on automated policing, principally speed cameras. Where are the traffic policemen? In all likelihood they’re sat in their cars watching the VASCAR (or whatever the latest equivalent is) to see who goes by them too quickly. Or at best they’re sat on their car bonnet with a speed gun in their hand. That, unless an accident is notified, is as involved as the modern traffic copper gets.

My Dad was a policeman for 30 years. I grew up around policeman, and have travelled countless miles as the passenger of very able, very well-qualified Police drivers. And the one common trait they all had is that they drove to suit the road conditions. Exactly what any other experienced driver does, but with the additional experience a police driver used to have. But we can’t do that any more, even if we happen to be the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire, because cameras take no account of the weather, the driver’s ability, the road conditions, the time of day or a multitude of other factors an experienced copper would take in to account when deciding whether a conviction or a ‘ticking-off’ was appropriate. And even if you’re nicked by a copper with a hand gun, he’s under so much pressure to hit ‘targets’ that even then the conditions surrounding your ‘offence’ are ignored. It’s a sorry state.

But it goes much deeper than that. There are estimated to be over 1 million uninsured cars on the roads. Several times that number are reckoned to be driven by drivers with no license. And a substantial number of vehicles are being driven in unroadworthy condition. How is that going to be tackled when all traffic police do is look for someone doing 3mph over the limit? And what about slow drivers? They can cause havoc and frustration on the roads with complete impunity, because a camera will never prosecute them, and there are no coppers left to stop them and put them right. Even drink-drivers have a much better chance of getting away with it than they did 10 years ago, again because there are no highly visible real deterrents to put them off taking the chance.

Perhaps a good starting point would be for the senior traffic policemen to stop spouting the nonsense they do about speeding, and address the real issues. After all, speed is a minor factor in accidents but, like global warming, has become the politically correct point of view. A recent report concluded that less than 4% of rural accidents are caused by speeding, and yet it seems that is the entire focus of traffic policing in the UK today. How can that be right? Shouldn’t the real issues be addressed, and isn’t it about time this obsession with prosecuting every motorist in the land off the road stopped?

Ban the cameras, and bring back real traffic policeman!