Results of a recent public opinion survey show that the majority of residents within South Yorkshire are in favour of safety cameras.

The survey, produced by South Yorkshire Police on behalf of the South Yorkshire Safety Camera Partnership, shows that 80% of people think that safety cameras are meant to encourage drivers to drive within the speed limits and almost 60% of respondents agreed that the cameras are an effective method of reducing road casualties.

Chief Superintendent Keith Lumley, Chair of the South Yorkshire Safer Roads Partnership said, “At a time when the Government has announced some huge cuts to spending on road safety across the country this survey shows that the majority of the public in South Yorkshire are in favour of keeping safety cameras to help make South Yorkshire roads safer.

“Since the introduction of safety cameras in South Yorkshire during 2002 we have seen the number of people killed and seriously injured on our county’s roads drop significantly. In 2002, 740 people were killed or seriously injured on the roads of South Yorkshire, in 2009 this figure dropped to 530. Every death is however a tragedy and we will strive to reduce further the numbers of people killed on our roads through what we know are successful reduction methods.

“The results of the survey are split by age and gender. Casualty statistics show that young male drivers are those most likely to be involved in a road traffic collision and from this survey it is interesting to see that they are the group least in favour of speed cameras”.

“It is clear that the cameras play a vital role in terms of road safety for the county and it is important that we continue to use them as a road safety tool”.

The survey, distributed to over 3,000 residents across the county also showed that 55% of people thought that safety cameras (fixed cameras, mobile cameras and average speed cameras) are the most effective type of speed enforcement.

In addition to the views of the public towards current speed enforcement the survey also asked drivers their thoughts on the possibility of using mobile camera vans to record other types of poor driver behaviour. Of those surveyed 81% thought that mobile cameras should be used for recording people not wearing seatbelts and 91% thought that the cameras should also be used to record drivers using hand-held mobile phones. This is an area of work that the Safety Camera Partnership and its partners within the South Yorkshire Safer Roads Partnership are currently looking into.