Traffic police unit should never have been removed.

I wasn’t the only person who was amazed when police commissioner David Baines disbanded the dedicated traffic unit a few years ago implying every one of his officers is a traffic cop. To be fair he had finance problems and serious major crime woes.

When the public and media were becoming very alarmed at the death on our roads and voicing the excessive speed many of our drivers are doing he had no choice but to bow down to the pressure and bring back the traffic unit.

The unit, however, has made many enemies with the public, due to the many petty ticketing being given out as the latest traffic figures show – an increase of 79%!!

I have personal accounts of this ticketing being executed with a clear number being unjustified and plain wrong but because of the time it takes to go to the court to contest it many pay the $100 fine.

However, the bad taste and anger the law abiding citizen feels for the police after it has happened to them is long lasting and any assistance they can provide when it comes up is “look the other way”.

Inspector Barnett added, “With these resources and targeted enforcement, we hope to see a positive change in this statistic a year from now but we need the public to work with us to reach that result.”

He is living in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks petty ticketing is going to achieve this. Whilst an officer is being sent out to do this the speedster and drunkards are getting away and quite frankly will continue to cause murder on our roads.

This is illustrated by the latest statistics showing persons charged with drinking and driving going down whilst the deaths on our roads was at twelve in 2015 – three times the number than in 2014.

One of our readers, who wishes to remain anonymous, pointed out that in 2001 Hampshire police “rolled out the [UK] government-mandated speed camera programme and disbanded the traffic unit. In 2002 road deaths increased to 104, effectively going back to the levels a decade before. Figures I extracted with great difficulty from the civilians running the ‘Safety Camera Partnership’ also showed this miracle cure was actually making things worse. Unlike a police patrol, the cameras only slow traffic down over a very short stretch of road so creating a brake/accelerate response (it’s called a ‘wave’ effect) as drivers try to avoid getting caught. At the end of the first year the camera sites were credited with a 43% reduction in deaths and serious injuries, in fact all they had done was move the crashes to another location.

“To give an example of how bad is got in 2002, at one point Hampshire had to bring in traffic units from Wiltshire to investigate fatal crashes because they simply didn’t have the resources to do the work themselves. In 2003 ‘high visibility’ roads policing returned to the roads of Hampshire and road deaths promptly went back to 2001 levels.

“Considering how many senior RCIPS officers come from the UK I find it hard to believe that lessons like this were ignored when the RCIPS traffic unit was closed down. Possibly the problem is that none of those responsible were themselves traffic officers and saw just how bad things can get? One of the people I worked very closely with was not only a retired senior traffic officer but had also served as a Coroner’s Officer – he’d seen it all first hand and was appalled by the attitude of those responsible for the 2002 fiasco.

“A few years ago I discussed this with a Florida traffic cop and he summed it up very simply, “What’s the first thing you do when you see a patrol car?” Don’t know about you but I double-check my speed and I bet over 90% of drivers do the same. There’s no substitute for traffic patrols.”

I echo that last sentiment – “There’s no substitute for traffic patrols.”