Friday 9 July 2010

BBC London News is at it yet again

Londoners have paid £7.3m in fines in one year after being caught out by CCTV cars which "compromise road safety", a privacy campaign group has claimed.

[Note that 'Londoners' are conflated with 'London drivers who flout road traffic regulations']

Currently 24 councils use cars mounted with cameras on masts to spot traffic offences, Big Brother Watch said.

The group said these patrol cars were being used by councils to "make money, with road safety only an afterthought".

Total garbage, since this kind of enforcement is actually devoted to offences like obstructing the hatched yellow markings at major road junctions and is primarily concerned not with ‘road safety’ but with maintaining traffic flow and preventing obstruction. This kind of enforcement actually benefits drivers, though it also may assist pedestrians who are trying to cross when the green woman sign is showing, only to be cut up by drivers who are turning.

The journalists on BBC London News are car supremacist to the core. They ignore cycling fatalities and are totally obsessed with parking ticket stories. There is no crappy little parking ticket press release that the journalists on BBC London News will not elevate into a major news story to convey the message that lawless drivers are persecuted victims.

It’s obvious why. These unaccountable journalists plainly have numerous parking tickets and speeding convictions, don’t cycle, and enjoy a lavishly subsidised car and taxi dependent lifestyle.
The real story ought to be the glaring disparity between enforcement of parking offences and enforcement of much more serious road traffic offences. If you park on a yellow line in London there’s a good chance you’ll get a ticket. But if you drive around chatting on a handheld mobile phone, break the speed limit, jump the lights, and don't bother to insure your car, the chances of being caught are just about nil.

The real story ought to be why neither this government nor the last had any interest in seriously curbing the known dangers of people using mobile phones while driving, and why the Metropolitan Police has been allowed to get away with a massive reduction in traffic policing which puts the lives of all Londoners at risk, apart, of course, from those people who enjoy a chauffeur-driven lifestyle (like the wildly overpaid and underperforming Commissioner and Commanders of the dysfunctional and car supremacist Metropolitan Police).