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Police remove cameras over safety fears

A police force is dismantling 10 speed cameras and removing film from another 50 after the first official admission that badly positioned devices could undermine road safety, according to a report on Times online.

West Midlands Police has found that many of its cameras fail to comply with Government rules on where they can be located. The cameras being removed in the West Midlands were installed before the rules on siting were tightened in 2000.

A spokesman for the West Midlands Casualty Reduction Partnership said that motorists had been braking suddenly after spotting the cameras too late. "We recognise that there is a potential safety hazard from sudden braking if you can't see the camera," he said.

The partnership spokesman said that the Partnership had also decided to switch off cameras at locations where there had been no injury in three years. "We hope our approach will convince motorists that we only have cameras where there is a road safety problem," he said.

The report also says that several partnerships are being forced to delay plans to install more cameras because the DfT has yet to approve them - and that some partnerships suspect that the department is beginning to doubt the effectiveness of cameras.

Last month the department commissioned a research project to investigate claims that the fall in road casualties at camera sites was due more to the random nature of crashes than to drivers slowing down.

For full article visit http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1665429,00.html