I have long held the belief that councils are far more interested in their finances and petty one-upmanship against the motorist than they are in serving the people who elected them. For example, I recently reported that in the wake of impending changes to legislation, whereby police will be able to issue 
penalty charges (PCNs) and licence points to people who demonstrate careless driving, Nottingham City Council (NCC) announced that it is prepared to spend taxpayers’ money sending out a camera car to try and catch more of them in the act. It’s worth pointing out that they already have such a car, and they use it around the City Centre to patrol bus lanes and no stopping areas, though this doesn’t mean that they’d not willingly buy a fleet of the damned things were they to go ahead with this vendetta.
It’s hard to see what benefit this could have to NCC, since they themselves cannot gain financially, nor can they actually issue PCNs. In fact, it would cost an additional fortune for them to report any videoed instances and hope that the police followed it up, and quite frankly I doubt that NCC and the police have quite the same ideas about what constitutes sufficient infringement – particularly if the motorist appeals to the courts. And as I also mentioned in that previous article, NCC continues to completely ignore one of the biggest sources of bad driving – taxis – in order to further penalise the common driver. That’s because taxis are a major revenue stream for the council (i.e. they have to buy licences to operate), whereas motorists aren’t… yet. NCC has no interest in getting bad drivers off the road. If it did, it would target taxis (and all forms of bus) immediately.
Bus lanes are separate problem. I wrote recently about what to do if an emergency vehicle comes up behind and there’s a bus lane in operation alongside you. Any organisation which was staffed by at least one or two normal human beings would explicitly state in all its FAQs that you could drive in the bus lane to allow the emergency vehicle to pass. To be fair to NCC, it actually does say this on its website. However, Nottinghamshire County Council and numerous others around the country are all extremely careful not to say anything about it at all – thus leaving the door open to increase revenue from PCNs if they so choose. Some have absolute zero tolerance policies. And yet having (or not, as the case may be) an explicit statement concerning bus lanes is a matter of immense safety importance, often involving life or death situations. You’d expect it to be Item #1 on the FAQ list, yet these vile vultures carefully avoid addressing it so they can milk money from motorists in order to line their own pockets.
Of course, most of the foregoing might be seen as just a personal opinion. So it was interesting to see this article on the BBC website. Apparently, councils plan to install even more CCTV equipment at black spots in order to milk still more money from their victims.
One example in Basildon tells how the monkeys running the council have turned one particular road into a buses-only route. Buses don’t run on a Sunday, but cars still can’t use it. The idiots in charge reckon that they’d review the times if “the local community supported it”. Like I say: idiots.
Reading Borough Council (RBC) is apparently the worst county for issuing tickets. One clown who got voted into power says:
This allegation that somehow we put in cameras to raise money is nonsense… We put in cameras so that buses… run on time and the bus lanes do what they say.
Complete bollocks. The number of buses held up by cars using 24-hour or in-operation bus lanes can be counted on the fingers of one hand, figuratively speaking. And the difference between what it was like before Fascist-like enforcement and after would be smaller still. The idiot quoted would have us believe that until RBC started enforcing it, everyone drove in bus lanes. They didn’t – and those who did still do.
Bristol City Council (BCC), along with RBC, is seeking to gain extra powers so it can harvest money via other trumped-up infringements.
There is a particular box junction in London with CCTV, and this has snared 29,000 motorists in the year to March 2013. Do they really believe that 29,000 motorists are career criminals, or is it maybe a case that the policing of the junction in question might be a little over zealous?
One motorist who got mugged by the council at this junction put in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request asking for email exchanges within the traffic department responsible to be handed over. What he received makes very interesting reading. There was reference to financial targets, and comments such as:
Another record for us…
The late shift penalty charge notices helped matters so well done everyone…
A worrying start [to the financial period] as penalty charge notices seemed to reduce…
It is obvious that these vultures don’t want safety or congestion improvements. That second one reeks of “teamworking” – trust me, I’ve been there. I know how this will have been briefed to staff. Of course, the pond scum running the councils claim that all this was “office banter” – which is more bollocks. The “well done” comment is clearly from higher up, and the other two are not exactly something the average traffic warden would say.
And if you’re still not convinced, the reporter in question did an experiment where he put up signs on lamp posts warning drivers to obey the box junction rules. This caused a 25% reduction in drivers stopping in it. But of course, that meant a 25% reduction in revenue for the council – so Hammersmith and Fulham told him to remove them.
You can watch more on the Panorama programme which dealt with this topic.
Can CCTV catch you in a bus lane?
Yes. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt (an error on my part some years ago). Some councils even have mobile cameras in vans to catch you doing it (or other “road offences”).