Page 1830 - Week 06 - Thursday, 14 May 2015
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of the impact of other existing or possible future road infrastructure and traffic treatments and the associated constraints on current or future performance and effectiveness of the cameras. In the meantime the cameras will be left at their current locations. It should be noted they do still continue to make a safety contribution.
One of the key aspects of the new road safety camera strategy is that it will improve the use of mobile speed cameras in the ACT. As I noted earlier, statistical analysis of the impact of the ACT’s mobile cameras, undertaken as part of the UNSW evaluation, found that mean percentile speeds on ACT roads with mobile cameras reduced by six to eight per cent in the first few years after the introduction of the cameras and remained at that level for a few years more.
The reduction in speed coincided with a 25 to 30 per cent reduction in serious injury crashes. That is a significant statistic—a 25 to 30 per cent reduction in serious injury crashes—and it is consistent with Nilsson’s power model, which provides that a six to eight per cent reduction in speed will result in a 20 per cent reduction in casualty crashes. These types of results are exactly the reason for using road safety cameras on ACT roads: to reduce speeds, to improve safety, and to reduce the terrible trauma that comes from road casualties and fatalities.
Mobile speed cameras are also an aspect of the speed camera strategy that resonates with the community, with ACT community road safety surveys showing that the community considers mobile cameras to be the most effective camera technology to reduce speeding. The UNSW review identified that after several years of the ACT’s mobile camera strategy, levels of serious injury crashes on roads with mobile cameras increased to pre-camera levels, coinciding with decreasing and less consistent enforcement at mobile camera sites. The new camera strategy, with a focus on mobile cameras, intends to correct this and to ensure mobile cameras again lead to good road safety results.
Firstly, the ACT government will increase funding to mobile cameras by more than $1.2 million over the next four years. I expect this will fund an additional four mobile camera operators and increase mobile camera operations on ACT roads by approximately 120 hours per week. Secondly, the mobile cameras will be used to implement a genuine anytime, anywhere approach to speed enforcement. (Extension of time granted.)
The Auditor-General’s report noted that the ACT’s relatively limited number of sites where mobile camera vans may operate is an impediment to the achievement of an anytime, anywhere approach. To address this, I intend to amend the road transport legislation to allow cameras to be used on any road in the ACT. Currently a mobile camera can only be used on a limited number of roads. The new approach will ensure cameras can be generally deployed anywhere, anytime on any road in the ACT.
A mobile camera deployment strategy has also been developed, as recommended by the Auditor-General. The mobile camera deployment strategy provides the framework for improved operation and strategic deployment of the mobile cameras. The deployment strategy will see the mobile cameras deployed to roads across the territory based on three deployment principles. The first deployment principle is to target roads
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